


Windward Inn

by twobirdsonesong



Category: CrissColfer - Fandom, Glee RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Beach House, Beaches, CrissColfer Big Bang, Developing Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-28
Updated: 2015-09-28
Packaged: 2018-04-23 14:14:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 37,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4879918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twobirdsonesong/pseuds/twobirdsonesong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every summer for the last ten years Chris has escaped to Santa Monica for long, lazy months, helping his parents out at the Windward Inn, the vacation house they rent out to travelers, sightseers, and guests.  This summer, a man named Darren has checked in to stay at the Inn for 6 weeks, leading to a revelatory summer for Chris.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to my beta [Shaina](http://crisscolfuck.tumblr.com/) for keeping an eye on this and fixing my ridiculous and numerous typos.
> 
> And of course a huge shoutout to my big bang partner [honeyblaine for her delightful and beautiful fan art.](http://honeyblaine.tumblr.com/post/130093698958/every-summer-for-the-last-ten-years-chris-has) There’s no point in reading these fics if you aren’t looking at the art as well. Danke.

When Chris looks back on that summer, he does so without regret.

 

***

 

“You remember that the new guest is checking in today?”

 

Chris pauses as his mother’s voice reaches him, halfway down the wooden stairs, one hand still on the railing. “Yes, mom.”

 

“And you’ve got the bed made with that lighter summer blanket?” His mother asks, bustling down the sunlit hallway.

 

“Yes, mom.”

 

“And you put fresh towels in the bathroom and the linen closet?”

 

Chris rolls his eyes.  “You know I’m not _actually_ the housekeeper here, right?”

 

Mrs. Colfer stops and fixes Chris with a hard look. “You want to run that one by me again?”

 

Chris flushes, chastened.  It’s not exactly true.  Chris’ parents employ a fulltime housekeeper who keeps the Inn in tip-top shape, but Chris has been helping out every summer vacation for the last ten years, ever since his parents bought this big house on the beach in Santa Monica that they rent out to vacationers.

 

“Sorry,” he says, contrite.  “Yes, everything is ready.”

 

“This one is staying with us a while, so I want to get off on the right foot with him,” Mrs. Colfer says, as though Chris hadn’t been the one to process the reservation when it came through.

 

 _Darren Criss. Billing address in New York City. Paid with an American Express. Staying for six weeks. No food allergies or special requests_.

 

He’s one of the easier ones already.

  
Chris’ mom is a teacher, and every summer since Chris turned nine the family escapes to Santa Monica for long, lazy blissful months at the beach. The house is steps from the water and too big for just the four of them (three this year, since Chris’ sister is taking a summer course abroad in London), and to pay off the mortgage faster, Chris’ parents opened the spare rooms to travelers, sightseers, vacationers, and even sometimes more long-term boarders.

 

“Everything’s good, mom,” Chris stresses, but he trudges back upstairs just to be sure.

 

The Windward Inn is more of a bed and breakfast than a hotel or a vacation rental.  Chris’ dad cooks breakfast and dinner for the family and any of the guests who want to join them for meals.  Sometimes Chris eats alone in his room, if he’s tired or if the guests are slightly too weird to deal with.  It doesn’t happen often - usually the people who stay with them are nice enough or keep to themselves – but it has happened.

 

Chris doesn’t mind that he’s sort of grown up among strangers, and most of them adults at that.  He and his sister had each other to torment, and to stay entertained.  More often than not the guests are hardly in the house at all, too eager to hang out on the beach or go into town.  And now Chris has his own friends to spend his days and late nights with. It all works out.

 

This morning Chris has already made sure everything’s ready for the guest, for Mr. Criss, to check in later in the afternoon. But he does another sweep of the bedroom, making sure the sheets are neatly tucked at the corners and the bathroom mirror is clean of toothpaste flecks.  Even though the housekeeper cleans the rooms after each guest leaves, and tidies up day to day, it’s always been Chris’ job to help out. The fact that his parents pay him for his labor doesn’t hurt.

 

The major downside to having a long-term boarder staying is that Chris’ mom always puts them in the room next to Chris’. It’s the biggest guest suite in the house, with a sitting room, an attached bathroom (shared with Chris) and a private balcony that looks out towards the ocean lapping just yards away. The bed is comfortable and the view is breathtaking; Chris thinks it’s well worth the weekly rental fee.

 

Chris supposes it does sort of suck to sometimes have to share a bathroom with a complete stranger, but he’s gotten used to it over the years.  The big bathroom has two doors – one to Chris’ bedroom and the other to the guest bedroom – and each have their own lock.  Chris has never had a problem with it.

 

***

 

It’s just after four o’clock in the afternoon when an older, dusty blue BMW pulls up to the house.  Chris can see it from the kitchen window, easing up the long driveway from the main road.  The car has California plates, but doesn’t look like a rental.

 

The man who gets out of the car is smaller than Chris expects, though he’s not sure why he was expecting anything at all. He’s wearing pink shorts that end several long inches above his knees, a green t-shirt that’s a size too small, and flip-flops.  He’s got wild, dark hair, aviator sunglasses, and even though there’s no surfboard strapped to the roof of his car, he looks every inch the part.  (Of course, they advertise on the website that surfing and diving equipment comes with renting a room, so he might still be a surfer.)  Chris watches as the man – _Darren_ – stretches, reaching his arms over his head, and the movement pulls his t-shirt taut across his chest.  Chris swallows heavily.

 

 _That’s_ never been a problem before either.

 

Darren pulls a yellow pack and a guitar case out of the back seat, slinging them around his body, and a couple of pieces of luggage out of the trunk.  It doesn’t seem like enough for six weeks, but if this guy’s wardrobe consists of shorts and t-shirts then he’s probably going to be fine.  And besides, one of the many amenities of the house is laundry.

 

“Chris!” His mom calls through the house, startling Chris out of his staring.

 

“I’m coming!” He calls back, and then mutters quietly, “Jesus, I can see the fucking car.”

 

He rushes down to the front door.  When he was young, his parents thought it was cute to have him greet the guests when they arrived, this little kid with chubby cheeks and floppy hair welcoming people to the house.  Now it’s just a habit.

 

Chris opens the door just as Darren is dragging his suitcase up the steps to the wide porch.  He looks up and the smile that stretches across his face is astonishing. Chris feels himself blush right down to his toes.  His bare toes. He absolutely forgot to put on shoes in his haste.  He blushes even brighter.

 

“Hi!” Darren calls out, waving.  The strap of his bag has stretched the V-neck of his shirt and Chris is definitely not staring at the solid line of his collarbone, or the dark hair on his chest.

 

“Uhm, hi.”  Chris squeaks and then clears his throat.  “You must be Darren.”

 

“I am.” He sets his suitcase down with a thump and pulls his sunglasses off, squinting under the bright summer sun at Chris. “And are you the owner of this fine establishment?”

 

Chris presses his lips together.  “Oh yeah, that’s me.  Proud property manager.  I’m Chris.”  He squares his shoulders and offers a hand out to Darren to shake.  He can do this; he’s used to playing the host.  Just because Darren’s eyes are huge and bright, and just because his thighs are tightly muscled, and just because his teeth aren’t perfect as he grins at Chris, doesn’t mean he’s going to forget how to welcome paying guests.

 

“Anyway, come on in.”  He reaches for Darren’s suitcase and big duffle bag to bring them inside, but Darren’s there before he can get to it.

 

“Oh no, I got it.”

 

“It’s ok,” Chris reassures.  “Part of the service here.”

 

Something flashes in Darren’s eyes and he opens his mouth, but hesitates to say anything in response. Then he shakes his head, just a shiver of a movement, before he grabs the handle of his suitcase and hefts his duffle back onto his shoulder.

 

“Thanks, dude, but I can’t ask you to do that.”

 

Chris raises his hands in defeat and steps back into the house, holding the door open for Darren.  “Come on in, I’ll show you to your room and then give you the grand tour.”

 

He barely makes it halfway to the staircase before his mother emerges from the kitchen.

 

“Hi, dear!” She greets, bustling over to shake Darren’s hand as well.  “Hope you had a good journey here.”

 

Darren nods.  “Yeah, yeah, the drive was nice.”

 

Chris wants to ask where he drove from, this man with a New York City billing address and a car with California plates, but he doesn’t.

 

“Good, good.  Oh, let us get your bags for you, dear.”  Mrs. Colfer nods her head meaningfully at Chris, who opens his mouth to tell her that he already tried, but Darren pulls his bag closer to himself.

 

“Oh no ma’am, that’s okay,” he protests. “Like I already told Chris here, that’s very kind of you, but I can’t ask you to do that. Not that I’m hiding something weird in my bags or anything, but my mom would never let me hear the end of it if she found out I didn’t handle my own shit.  I mean, my own stuff.  And believe me, she’d find out.”

 

Mr. Colfer smiles fondly at him.  “Well then, my son will show you to your room. Don’t hesitate to ask if you need anything.  Anything at all. Will you be staying in for dinner tonight?”

 

Darren nods.  “Yeah, I was planning on it.  Is that okay?”

 

“Oh of course, hon, we’re happy to cook whenever you’d like.  This is your home while you’re here.”

 

“Thank you, ma’am,” Darren says, sincerity etched deep, and Chris can tell that he means it.  Either that or he’s an amazing actor.

 

“Come on,” Chris says, before his mom can sidetrack Darren into the kitchen right then and there.  “Your room is just up here.”

 

Chris trudges up the stairs, awkward with his empty hands while Darren hefts all his own things.

 

“So, this is your room,” Chris leads them through the doorway into the guest suite.

 

“Wow,” Darren breathes, setting his things on the floor, and Chris watches him look around the room with wide-eyed appreciation. “This is _way_ better than the pictures on the site.”

 

“Uhm, thanks.  This is your sitting room, I guess, and over here is the bedroom. That’s your balcony.”

 

Chris watches as Darren strides through the bedroom and over to the double French doors that lead outside.  He pushes the heavy curtains aside, letting in the warm golden sun, and presses his nose right up to the glass.

 

“Fucking amazing view.”

 

Chris nods to himself, pulling his eyes away from the generous curve of Darren’s ass in those ridiculous pink shorts. He knows the view on the other side of the glass well.  The Pacific Ocean stretches unimaginably vast, from the clean sand beach all the way to the horizon and beyond.

 

“Through there is the bathroom,” Chris points to the closed door on the other side of the bedroom.  “Uhm, you share it.  With me.”

 

That pulls Darren’s attention away from the view. The late afternoon sun casts long shadows on his face, highlighting his cheekbones and darkening his eyes, and Chris’ stomach feels tight.

 

“With you?”  He asks, tilting his head, but he doesn’t sound upset.

 

But still, Chris can feel himself blushing once more. “Yeah, uhm, my room is on the other side.  So we share the bathroom.”  He tries not to think about Darren showering just on the other side of the door from him and fails.  Miserably.

 

“Oh, like a dorm,” Darren says, something that isn’t quite amusement in his voice.

 

“Is that going to be okay?” Chris rubs at the back of his neck and feels the heat radiating off his own skin, like a new sunburn. “If you’d rather have private bathroom-”

 

“-no, it’s fine-”

 

“-the site does say that this suite has a shared bath-”

 

“No, I know,” Darren interrupts.  “I just…assumed it would be with another guest.” He grins.  “We’re kind of going to be roomies for a couple of weeks.”

 

Chris huffs an almost-laugh.  “I guess.”  He’s never thought of the guests as anything other than guests. “Uhm, dinner’s usually around 7pm. So you have a few hours to unpack, rest, whatever.  There’s another couple staying this week, on the other side of the house. They’re nice, quiet. You might run into them.”

 

“You get many people staying as long as me?”

 

Chris shrugs.  “Not really.  Usually it’s for a week.  10 days. Or just the long weekend. We had someone stay the whole summer once, but I don’t think she left her room more than like, a dozen times?”

 

“With that big beautiful ocean right outside?”

 

Chris shrugs.  “I don’t question the will of our guests.”

 

Darren laughs.  “Fair enough.  Well, I certainly won’t be staying in my room the whole time.”

 

Chris bites his lip.  He wants to ask what Darren is even doing here and why he brought a guitar and why he’s staying so long, but that’s not really any of his business.  He’s just supposed to tidy up and make sure his parents’ guests are enjoying their stay. Sometimes he offers suggestions for places to eat, or things to do around Santa Monica.  Occasionally he’s acted as a tour guide, but mostly he tries to stay out of the guests’ way and make his own fun during the summer. It’s hard to want to really get to know any of them when they all eventually leave.

 

“Anyway, dinner’s at 7pm.  Uhm, your reservation said you weren’t allergic to anything…?”

 

“Nope, all good.  I’ll eat almost anything.”  Darren pats his stomach through his shirt and Chris tears his eyes away from the sweet curve of his narrow waist.

 

“Seafood okay?  I know dad got some fresh salmon this morning from the market.”

  
“Sounds delicious.  Honestly, Chris.  I get that this is a full service deal, but you don’t have to like, cater to me. I’m easy.  Promise.”

 

Chris shrugs.  “We’re a bed and breakfast; it’s what we do.”  It might not be Chris’ future, but he takes it seriously while he’s there.

 

Darren nods, but there’s something else in his face that Chris doesn’t know how to decipher.

 

“So yeah,” Chris continues.  “Unpack.  Get settled.  If you have any questions or anything let me or my mom know.  It was nice to meet you.” 

 

Chris turns and quickly escapes, carried by shivering tension in his belly and closing the door to the suite behind him. His cheeks are burning red and he’s not entirely sure why, though it probably has something to do with Darren’s bright eyes and surprisingly thick eyebrows, and the corded muscles in his thighs exposed by his ridiculous shorts, and the way he looks right at Chris when he talks.  And a dozen other things he doesn’t want to think about.

 

Chris sighs and rubs his hands over his face. They’ve had cute guests before, but Chris was younger then, and not at all interested.  He can’t say the same now.  He shakes it off and trudges back downstairs to help his dad get dinner ready.

 

***

 

Chris is just setting the dining room table when Darren shuffles in, yawning and scratching his belly.  He looks like he just woke up from a long nap; his hair flattened at the back and a mess everywhere else, and his eyes heavy lidded with sleep.  His feet are bare now, flip flops left somewhere in his room, and the casual, comfortable intimacy of it pulses low in Chris’ stomach.

 

Chris swallows and looks away, back to the forks and plates and other less complicated kitchenware.

 

“Something smells good,” Darren comments.

 

“Hope you’re hungry,” Mr. Colfer says, coming in from the deck with a tray covered in tinfoil.  He brings with him the scent of buttery salmon and the warm ocean air.

 

“Famished,” Darren responds and Chris watches Darren’s gaze follow the tray of food all the way to the table, eyes alighting with interest.

 

Chris’ mom comes bustling into the kitchen and she smiles warmly when she sees Darren.  “Oh good, you’re up.  It’ll just be us for dinner; our other guests have gone out for the evening.”

 

“Can I help with anything?” Darren asks sincerely and Chris gets the distinct impression he was raised well.

 

“Don’t be silly,” Mrs. Colfer tuts and touches him on the shoulder.  “Have a seat. We’re just about ready.”

 

“Where should I sit?” Darren asks it of Chris.

 

“Oh, anywhere.”  The big table can comfortably seat eight, for those times when the house is full, but Chris has placed all the settings at one end. “We’re not that formal.”

 

Darren nods, oddly thoughtful, and takes a seat on the side of the table where Chris has placed two settings.

  
Chris sets the last glasses down on the table before helping his dad bring in the vegetables from the grill.  He pretends like he can’t feel Darren’s eyes on him as he moves about the kitchen.

 

“And who is this?”  Darren asks suddenly.

 

Chris follows Darren’s gaze to the floor, where Cooper, his dog, has appeared to sprawl in a graceless lump at Darren’s feet. “Oh, that’s Cooper.” It makes something in Chris’ chest tighten to watch Darren lean over and scratch behind Cooper’s ears.

 

“Well you’re a beautiful boy,” Darren coos and Cooper’s tail thumps happily against the floor.

 

“Darren, do you drink?” Mrs. Colfer asks and Darren straightens back up in his chair.

 

“Oh uhm, yeah, I do.”

 

“We’ve got a lovely white wine for the fish.” Mrs. Colfer holds up a bottle.  “Do you like white wine?”

 

Darren shrugs.  “I’m good with whatever you guys are having.”

 

“Our friends run a vineyard in Napa. One of _those families_ , you know?  But they bring us bottles whenever we see them so it’s hard to complain when they gift us with such lovely things.  And we so love to share with our guests.”

 

Chris smiles to himself, shaking his head. His mother tells the same old stories to the new guests every summer.  Next she’ll Darren about how the deck is made from the recycled timbers of an old tugboat, and how the thick carpet in the hallway was a gift from an Iranian guest five years ago, and how some C-list celebrity once stayed for a weekend with his illicit lover and no she couldn’t _possibly_ name names.

  
When Chris looks over, Darren is watching him, and smiling.

 

The way Chris has set the table, there’s a place at the head for his mom, one left next to Darren, and one on the opposite side of the table.  Stealing himself and feeling incredibly young, Chris moves to sit next to Darren, but Mr. Colfer gets there before him, settling down in the chair between Darren and his wife. Chris bites his lip and sits down in the last seat remaining, across from Darren.  He does not miss the quick look Darren shoots him from underneath those long eyelashes.  It makes his stomach flip.

 

“Hope everyone is hungry,” Mr. Colfer says, lifting the tinfoil off the fish to reveal a perfectly grilled salmon.

 

“So are you unpacked?” Mrs. Colfer asks Darren as fish and vegetables and rice gets dished up onto plates and passed around. “Did you rest?”

 

“Yes, thank you.  Got some stuff put away and then I just _crashed_.”  He accentuates the word with a fine slashing motion of his hand. He looks like a man who speaks as much with his hands as he does his mouth.

 

“You had quite the drive, is that right?”

 

Darren nods.  “I did, yeah.  Down from San Francisco.”

 

“I thought you were from New York?” Chris blurts and then blushes furiously when everyone looks at him.  It’s not like he doesn’t have access to that information; he’s the one that processes the bulk of the reservations for the house. But it’s still embarrassing to reveal that he remembers Darren’s billing address.

 

“That’s where I live,” Darren notes. “But I’m actually from the Bay area.  My parents still live there.  I flew in, stayed the night, and then drove down.  Figured it’d be nice to have my old car with me while I’m here, plus, you know, I like the drive.  It’s…” He trails off, a thoughtful look in his eyes.  “I guess I just find it relaxing.”

 

“So what brought you to us?” Mr. Colfer asks.

 

“Oh, well, I guess I just needed to get away for a bit. New York can be pretty crazy, right, but I love it.  And I love what I do.  But even still, it can get to be a lot sometimes.  All that pressure I put on myself.  Gotta come back to my side of the country once in a while, you know? Get in the water, wash off all that city grime.  Clear my head a bit.”

 

Chris watches Darren’s face as he talks, notes the unsubtle twitch that tugs at the side of his mouth and the way something seems to be missing from his eyes.  He’s not saying everything about why he came to Santa Monica when he has family in San Francisco and why he’s staying for six whole weeks.  But those aren’t things Chris can politely ask about.

 

Mrs. Colfer nods like she completely understands. “An excellent idea. Well, we’re certainly happy to have you here,” she says, and Mr. Colfer chimes in with his agreement.

 

But Chris does not miss the way Darren’s eyes flicker across the table – just the barest of glances directed his way.

  
“Hand over your glass, dear,” Mrs. Colfer says.  “Let’s get you some wine to celebrate your first night here.”

 

She pops open the bottle with practiced ease. Chris pushes the wine glass he’d set for himself towards her, ever hopeful.  She doesn’t like it when he drinks, even in the house. Chris has made his argument about being 19 and how responsible he is over and again, but it seems to fall on deaf ears more often than not.  It’s the same argument he’s given since he was 16 and wanted the same spiked eggnog at Christmas that everyone else got.

 

His mom doesn’t say anything, but Chris can see the warning in her eyes, and it makes him feel all the more the child. He glances meaningfully towards Darren, silently begging his mom not to embarrass him.

 

She sighs, but fills his glass, and he takes it gratefully.

 

***

 

Darren is yawning by the end of the meal and Chris doesn’t blame him.  There’s too much food, too much wine, and his parents know how to keep a conversation going for hours.

 

“Can I help with the dishes?”  Darren asks, already standing from his chair while Chris is gathering up dirty plates.

 

“Absolutely not,” Mrs. Colfer chides, tapping him lightly on the shoulder.  “Don’t even consider it.

 

Darren looks helplessly at Chris, who just shrugs.

 

“You heard the woman,” he says, but he offers Darren a small smile.

 

“No need to stand on social graces,” Mrs. Colfer says, hands on her hips.  “You had a long drive and this is your vacation.  We don’t really run on a schedule here, so if you’d like to get to bed you certainly don’t need to worry about offending us.”

 

Darren opens his mouth to say something, but just ends up yawning again, wide and loud and shameless.

 

“That’s what I thought.”

 

“Well, thank you all for an amazing meal,” Darren says. “This really was a great way to kick off this trip.”

 

Mr. Colfer nods.  He looks incredibly pleased; a proud chef and a proud host. “Happy to hear it. And remember, anything you need, just ask.”

 

“I will, thanks.  Well, goodnight.”

 

“Goodnight, dear,” Mrs. Colfer responds, nodding fondly at him.

 

Darren shuffles out of the dining room. As he passes by Chris, who is carrying the last the dishes to the sink, he lightly brushes Chris’ elbow with his fingertips.

 

“Goodnight, Chris,” he murmurs, a throaty whisper that makes Chris start as his bare skin shocks at the unexpected touch and his heart lurches painfully in his chest.

 

“Night,” Chris croaks in response, hardly able to breathe for it as his blood rushes in his ears.  And then Darren is gone.

 

“Such a nice young man,” Mrs. Colfer is saying, when Chris can hear anything but his own racing heart again.

 

“Think he’ll be an excellent guest.”

 

“What do you think?”

 

Chris blinks. “What?  Oh, yeah.  He’s great.”

 

His mother chatters to his father as they clean up the dining room and kitchen, but Chris hardly hears any of it at all, just replaying the spare words Darren had said to him.  Over and over.

 

 _Goodnight, Chris_.

 

***

 

Even though the dinner went long, and preparing for new arrivals can be stressful, Chris knows he’s not going to be able to get sleep right away. He’s too keyed up from that barely there touch and the sound of his name spilling from Darren’s lips in such a way.

 

It’s a beautiful night though, warm with a fresh breeze coming off the ocean, and Chris takes off his shoes to go for a walk along the beach.  This late, the sand is cool and feels nearly damp under his feet.  Chris breathes in deep and lets it clear his mind.

 

He grew up much farther inland, and despite spending every summer at the ocean, he never gets tired of it.  He revels in the fresh, salted air and the sound of the waves relentlessly lapping at the shore, and the full dark quiet that falls at night.

 

When Chris looks back over his shoulder he can see the lights of the Windward Inn glowing warmly, and the darkened windows of Darren’s rented room.

 

He’s found guests attractive before, certainly, he’s only human after all, but it’s never been like this before. He’s never felt this nervous, this out of sorts around anyone, like he’s some fumbling kid who doesn’t know how to control his own hands.  It’s ridiculous and he hates it.  He doesn’t know Darren at all.  The guy was perfectly charming at dinner, but charm can be learned and it can disappear quickly in the face of familiarity. 

  
Chris is pretty sure Darren is a little older than him, a few years, maybe, but not so much that it really means anything.  And there’s something about the easy grace of his body, his wide-knuckled hands, his laughing eyes.  Chris can excuse his attraction for what it is.

 

But he can’t excuse the way Darren’s fingers had slid across the thin skin of his elbow, a touch he could barely feel, yet one that branded right down to his bones.  And he can’t excuse the unsubtle looks Darren passed him across the dinner table as he sat between Chris’ parents, those fleeting glances from under long lashes. Chris doesn’t know what those looks could mean, what that touch could mean.  Darren is just a guest. He’ll be there for the summer and then he’ll be gone, back to New York and back to whatever it is that he does for a living.

 

Chris doesn’t want to think about the acceptance letter to NYU that’s sitting on his desk at home and the welcome package that he’d received months ago.  He’s never been one to give over to groundless flights of romanticism and he’s certainly not going to start now.  Chris shakes his head at himself and kicks at the sand.

 

The beach stretches on for miles and the night is long.


	2. Chapter 2

Darren is gone when Chris eventually gets up in the morning.  He’d slept in, made drowsy by the warm sun angling across his bed and the lingering taste of the wine from the night before.

 

“Said he was going surfing,” Chris’ mom answers when Chris subtly tries to ask where Darren is over breakfast.

 

Chris nods, staring down at his granola. The reservation for the house comes with access to the surfing and diving gear stored in the attached garage, as well as any beach-day supplies that they have, and Darren had certainly seemed like the surfing type, with his strong legs and messy hair. Chris thinks he’d like to see Darren on a board, laughing with carefree abandon as an errant wave takes him down into the sea.

 

It’s summer though, and Chris isn’t going to sit around wallowing about some guy he just met.  He has too much pride for that.

 

“I’m gonna go hang out with some of the guys,” Chris tells his mom, getting up from the table to head upstairs and change.

 

He supposes he’s lucky that he doesn’t have a traditional shitty summer job.  While he’s at the beach, his friends back home are stuck with bullshit jobs they almost all seem to hate.  Sure, he has to do other people’s laundry sometimes, and clean bathrooms when needed, and go on runs to pick things up for the occasional difficult guest. But his parents pay him well, and when there are no chores to be done around the house, he gets free reign of his days and nights.  He has friends in town, people he really only sees during the summers, but it’s enough, even if most of them have to work more regular hours.

 

His bike is in the garage and it’s a short, easy ride into the heart of Santa Monica.  As he rides along the beach, weaving through tourists walking on the bike path and trying not to get killed by other cyclists who think it’s a race track, Chris glances out towards the glimmering ocean and wonders if any of the little specks out there are Darren.

 

The 3rd Street Promenade is packed during the summer days and worse during the nights, but Chris knows the area well. His friend, Rob, works at a little French café that his parents own.  Chris likes to tease Rob that the only reason his mom makes him work there is because his dimples bring in more customers and bigger tips.

 

Chris locks up his bike in an out of the way spot around the corner.  Somewhere down the promenade someone is playing music; it sounds like a simple guitar strumming away and Chris wonders if whoever it is has managed to pull in a crowd today. He hates to see people play with no audience.

  
Rob is behind the bar, mixing up what looks like a mojito, and Chris grins when he sees him.  Rob is wearing a tight white t-shirt with a deep v-neck and Chris knows exactly why he wears it at work; showing off his tanned skin and dark chest hair pulls in far more tips than when he wears anything else.

 

Chris tried once, with Rob, on a cool night around a blazing bonfire one Fourth of July.  There had been cheap beer brought by someone’s older brother and the sticky kiss had tasted like a missed chance.  But that was it.  Maybe they were a year too soon, or perhaps one too late, but Rob had smiled kindly and held his hand and that was it.  Chris does not look back on it with regret or shame.

 

“That for me?” Chris asks, jutting his chin towards the drinks that Rob slides across the countertop to the waiting server.

 

Rob’s face brightens when he sees Chris. “Have you turned 21 yet?”

 

Chris pouts good-naturedly, but clambers up onto a stool.  “One day, soon.”

 

“You’re always in such a hurry to grow up,” Rob comments.

 

“And you’re such a old man?”

 

Rob had turned 21 the year before, but he’d always carried with him an air of maturity. “Old man.  Going grey.  My knees hurt when it rains.”

 

“Good thing it never rains.”

 

Rob chuckles.  “Want something to drink?”

 

“Yes please.  And maybe a crab cake?”  Chris smiles as sweetly as he can, fluttering his eyelashes, and this time Rob laughs outright.

 

“This is the only reason you come to see me when I’m working.”

 

“You know that’s not true,” Chris denies. He doesn’t have to pay when Rob is working, and more often than not Rob will serve him what looks like a soda, but is actually heavily laced with an alcohol of his choosing.

 

“So what are you up to today?” Rob asks, pushing a tall glass that should be orange juice, but is definitely a mimosa at Chris.

 

Chris shrugs.  “I dunno. Didn’t have too many plans.  We’ve got a new guest at the house so…” Chris trails off, unsure of what else to say or even where that thought was going. “When are you off?”

 

“Four,” Rob responds, glancing at the clock. “You wanna do something later?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

 _Doing something_ inevitably means hanging out at the beach or at one of their places. Chris knows that Jenna is around and so is Mark – the usual crop of friends and acquaintances who come together during the long, hot summers.  Chris can waste some time eating Rob’s crab cakes and going on a few errands before getting together with everyone.

 

***

 

Chris hardly sees Darren at all that whole first week he’s there.  He knows Darren is around; Chris sees the extra dishes in the sink and he hears Darren in the bathroom in the morning and later at night.  Lying in bed, he tries not to think about Darren naked in the shower, just on the other side of the door, and he resolutely keeps his hand above the sheets until the shower stops and Darren’s bedroom door closes. Sometimes the lights are on in Darren’s room and other times they’re off.  Chris’ own bedroom balcony is next to Darren’s, separated by the space of the bathroom between them, and often he can see Darren’s various swim trunks drying on the railing, bright reds and obnoxious purples.

 

But he doesn’t see Darren save for fleeting glimpses here and there: a flash of Darren jogging up the stairs towards his room; his curly hair in the sunlight as he slips out the front door just as Chris comes around the corner; his strong legs, already a shade darker from the sun, as he gets into his car with a surfboard strapped to the roof.

 

He would think Darren was avoiding him, except that it’s really no different than their other guests every year. The Copelands are at the end of their 10-day stay and Chris has barely seen them at all.  He’s never really thought about how he can live in a house with another person and not see them.  It shouldn’t bother him, but somehow it does.  And he’s pretty sure he knows why.

 

Sometimes he hears music coming from Darren’s room, a gentle song plucked from a guitar and soft words he can’t quite make out through the doors separating their rooms.

 

He wants to ask about it.  He wants to ask about so much: what Darren does for a living, what songs he’s playing, what he does all day. Why he’s really staying at the house.  But there’s never a good time to stop and ask, not when Darren seems to be doing all he can to keep his distance from Chris.

 

He runs into Darren once that week, in the kitchen of all places.

 

It’s 3am and Chris wakes up from a dream desperately thirsty.  The lights are off throughout the house and he doesn’t expect anyone else to be around, but Darren is standing at the sink, staring out the window towards something unknown, with Cooper sitting calmly at his feet, chewing on a tennis ball like it’s not the middle of the night.

  
Chris pauses in the doorway, blinking stupidly, trying to wake his tired brain up to the sight.  Darren is shirtless, clad only in boxer-briefs, and the darkened room casts his body in deep shadows.

 

He wants to say something and he wants to turn and run before Darren notices he’s there.  He’s being ridiculous and he knows it.  Darren is just a guy, just another guy, and one little touch a week ago doesn’t mean anything at all.

 

Chris is about to escape back to his room when Cooper suddenly jumps up and trots over him, bumping happily into his legs, demanding to be petted.  Chris feels Darren’s gaze heavy on him and he steals himself before looking up.

  
Darren has turned away from the window and somehow his eyes are bright even through the darkness.  Chris can’t read his flat expression, can’t decipher what he might be thinking about at all, but those unblinking eyes make him swallow and blush all over.

 

“Hey,” Chris offers, still half bent over to scratch at Cooper’s flanks.

 

“Hey.”

 

“Didn’t mean to disturb you.”

 

Darren licks his lips.  “You – you didn’t,” he says, but there’s a note wrong in his voice and Chris doesn’t believe him.

 

“I was just thirsty.”

 

“I couldn’t sleep,” Darren says, answering a question Chris didn’t quite want to ask.

 

Chris realizes it’s the most they’ve said to each other since the night Darren checked in, since he told Chris _goodnight_ in a different kind of voice and touched his skin, right here in this very kitchen, right where Chris is standing once more. It sends a deep shiver of awareness through Chris and he wonders, helplessly, if Darren is remembering it too. If he is, is it a good memory?

 

“Well,” Chris croaks past his dry throat. “I’m just gonna…” he turns and slips back up the stairs to his room, still thirsty, hands shaking with errant nerves.

 

He doesn’t see Darren at all for another two days.

 

***

 

There’s no set schedule for the laundry at the Inn. Mrs. Colfer tells all of their guests that they’re perfectly welcome to leave their laundry in a specially designated basket in their rooms and it’ll get done while they’re out enjoying their vacation time.  And if they don’t want to take advantage of the service then they don’t have to. There have been a couple guests who were oddly protective of their clothes.

 

Chris sort of likes taking over the laundry. Of all the chores he ends up doing around the Inn, it’s one of his least disliked ones.  It’s not so much that he enjoys touching other people’s clothes, but there’s something incredibly simple about gathering up baskets and taking them down to the wash.  If they’ve only got one guest in the house he throws their laundry in with his own things and his families.  But if they’ve got multiple guests staying at the same time he’s sure to separate everything into different loads.  The last thing he wants to do is mistakenly put someone’s panties back in the wrong room.  He’s not going to be the one responsible for ending someone’s relationship over a pair of undies.

 

It’s such a rote thing for Chris to do that he doesn’t think about the fact that it’s _Darren’s_ clothes until he’s at the slightly ajar door to Darren’s room.

 

Chris pauses, hand raised to knock. He’s sure Darren is out of the house already; he heard him up and moving around in the bathroom earlier that morning, and he hasn’t seen a glimpse of him all day, just like he hasn’t seen a glimpse of him for the last two days.  Chris swallows and knocks anyway, because he refuses to break protocol and just waltz into one of their guest’s rooms, even if that guest is someone he’s seen half-naked.  By accident.

  
There’s no response to his knock so Chris tentatively pushes the door all the way open.

 

The room is neat even though Darren has been staying in it more than a week.  Chris has run the gamut of guests when it comes to cleanliness, from those who barely touch their rooms at all, to the ones who seem to think it’s perfectly all right to treat the room like a garbage dump simply because they know someone is going to come through and clean it up every day.  Those guests tend to discover that they have a hard time finding any future availability at the Inn.

 

Darren’s left the suite looking pleasantly lived in. In the little living room, a book sits on the coffee table and there’s a light jacket thrown over the back of a chair; the kind of thing someone would pack on a longer trip just in case the weather turned a bit.  A pair of shoes sits on the mat by the door, put there specifically to try and keep sand from tracking through the rooms.

 

In the bedroom, a half-full glass of water sits on the nightstand with a notebook and a pair of glasses.  The bed is made, a bit messily, and one of the pillows seems to still bear the impression of the head that rested upon it. When Chris breathes in he can smell the salt of the ocean that pervades the house, but also something deeper, something warmer, and Chris knows that it’s Darren.  His soap and skin and whatever cologne he wears. It’s nice, Chris thinks, and then blushes because of it.

 

A t-shirt is crumpled at the end of the bed and Chris leaves it be.  It’s one of the unspoken rules that they don’t take clothes that aren’t in the laundry, but Chris still wants to know why that one piece of clothing has been left out, when the rest of the room is so tidy. It’s not like Darren has left clothing laying about all over the place.  Just the one shirt, and when Chris glances through the French doors that lead out to Darren’s balcony, he can see a pair of red swim trunks drying under the sun.

 

Chris grabs the laundry basket from the closet. Right on top is a pair of black boxer-briefs and Chris flushes all the way down to his sternum. He’s touched other men’s underwear before and he stopped blushing about _that_ years ago.  But this is different.  This is Darren and this cloth was pressed against the most intimate parts of him. Chris clenches his jaw and takes the clothes down to the laundry room.

 

***

 

Dinner is early that night because Darren still hasn’t returned from wherever he’s disappeared to these last few days and the Fords, the newest guests, had reservations at some fancy restaurant for one of their last nights in the house.  Chris’ dad makes them a simple pasta dish with grilled vegetables and they end up eating out on the deck because it’s such a nice evening. 

 

Chris looks out towards the ocean while his parents chatter away about nothing, looks out at the numerous little dots that are actually people still lazing about on the beach, and wonders if any of them are Darren.

 

He’s just putting the plates into the dishwasher when his phone buzzes with a text.  And then another.

 

**Beach. Now.  The usual spot.**

 

Chris rolls his eyes at Mark’s familiarly blunt text.   The second message is from Rob.

 

_Hey we randomly all met up down at the beach after work.  Don’t bother bringing anything to drink.  We’ve got plenty._

 

 _Gimme 10 minutes to get there_ , Chris responds before shoving his phone back in his pocket.

 

“Hey mom,” he calls out.  His parents have already retired to the living room with Cooper to watch a movie, their usual post-dinner activity on the rare occasions when they have the house to themselves.  “I’m gonna go meet up with Mark and the guys for a bit down at the beach.”

 

His mom nods, smiling faintly.  Mark had her wrapped around his little finger the first day they met, which only happened when Mark showed up at the house unannounced with a 24-case of beer three years ago when Chris was even more underage than he currently is.

 

“Be safe,” Mrs. Colfer says. “It’s getting dark. Call if you need a ride home or anything.”

  
Chris nods.  He hasn’t yet had to call his mom to pick him up from one of their hangouts, but that’s mostly because he has no interest in getting blind, stupid drunk. He just likes to have a drink, hang out with the friends he only gets to see 3 months out of the year, and pretend like this is his whole life.

 

“I will.”

 

***

 

The bonfire is already blazing when Chris gets down to the beach, a somewhat private slice of sand they discovered years ago.

 

There’s a bigger group that Chris had expected gathered around, people he doesn’t know and doesn’t even recognize from other parties.  But Mark is there, and he bounces up to Chris and presses a bottle of beer into his hand.

 

“Who are all these people?” Chris asks and looks around at the all faces illuminated by the flickering light of the fire. If he looks for dark, wild hair and sundrenched skin, well, he’s only human.

 

“No idea,” Mark responds brightly.  “Friends of friends?  Friends of friends of friends?  They all brought drinks though, so we’re cool.”

 

Chris nods and takes a sip of his beer. He sees Jenna with a little group, and her friend Dianna, who must have brought some of these other people. These people who are not Darren. When Chris finally spots Rob he heads straight for him, grateful for another familiar face.

 

“Hey,” Chris says, bumping a greeting into Rob’s shoulder.

 

“Hey!  You made it.” Rob pulls him into a one armed hug.  It had a taken a bit after their one and only awkward kiss for Chris to return to being as comfortable with Rob as he is, and he’s grateful he got there.

 

“You guys started without me.”

 

Rob laughs.  “This was completely unexpected.  Trust me.  I don’t even know who half these people are.”  He gestures to the gathered group with his beer.

  
“We’re going to have to relocate our secret beach hangout.”

 

“I don’t think it’s been much a secret for a while,” Rob says, shaking his head ruefully.

 

“Well, not after _last_ year.”

 

“Definitely not,” Rob agrees and his dark eyes glitter joyfully in the firelight.  “Some people brought some food.  Mostly drinks, but a bit of food.  Let’s grab some before it’s all gone.”

 

Chris sticks close to Rob as they amble towards toward the overturned driftwood currently serving as a table.  He says hi to Jenna and Dianna, who introduces him to her friend, Amber.  Chris yells a greeting to his friend, Kevin, who’s sitting on a beach towel with a pretty girl and a prettier guy.  Kevin just winks at him and continues his very obvious flirtation with the wonder pair.

 

“That guy,” Chris marvels, shaking his head.

 

“Right?” Rob agrees.

 

It ends up being a fun night, even if Chris spends too much of it searching every face for one that might be Darren’s.

 

Most of the people Chris doesn’t know seem okay, as far as near-strangers go.  They kind of keep to themselves, naturally splitting off into groups of people who know each other the most, which means Chris ends up with his friends and the other people end up with theirs.

 

Gradually Chris becomes aware of someone who keeps staring at him from across the sand.  He’d dismissed the look at first.  There’s got to be 30 people milling about the bonfire; the guy could have been looking for anyone.  But Chris catches the guy staring again.

 

He looks like every annoying frat guy who comes to Santa Monica during the summer to get drunk and puke in the sand. He’s wearing a neon green tank top and a backwards baseball cap and his blonde facial hair is a disappointment even from a distance.  Chris looks away and does not look back.

 

***

 

When Chris finally gets home it’s half past two in the morning and he knows that the entire house will probably be asleep. He locks up his bike as quietly as he can and creeps up the staircase, avoiding the one creaky step that stays creaky no matter what he does to it.  It’s not like he’d get in trouble if his parents knew how late he’d been out, but he still doesn’t want to wake them.  His mom has a habit of grilling him with questions about where he’d been and what he’d been doing, and it’s not like drinking a few beers around a bonfire is anything she’d get mad about, he just doesn’t want to deal with it.

 

He’s tired and a little buzzed, but he’s not quite ready to sleep, and Chris steps out on his balcony for a few minutes to let the cooler night breeze clear his head.  He doesn’t have insomnia, but sometimes it takes a little longer for him to wind down, to get to a place where his mind is calm enough to close his eyes and finally rest.

 

On the next balcony over – Darren’s balcony – a pair of purple swim shorts is drying on the railing.  No light shines through the curtains and Chris assumes that Darren is asleep, though Chris supposes that he doesn’t even know if Darren came back to the house that night.

 

He knows Darren is avoiding him, or at least he probably is, but he has no idea why.  He’s careful not to be rude to the guests, even when on the rare occasion they deserve it.  Mostly he stays out of their way unless they need something, and aside from dinner that first night it’s not like he’s really interacted with Darren at all.

  
Except, of course, for those taut, tense minutes in the kitchen a few nights back.   Chris remembers so clearly the lines of Darren’s body, exposed and thrown into shadow in the dim light of the kitchen, the freckles on his shoulders, and thick veins in his arms.  He remembers Darren’s bright eyes and the sleepy lines around his mouth, the way he’d been staring out the kitchen window as though seeking something vital out in the great distance. Chris still doesn’t know what he’s looking for, here in Santa Monica, here as far from New York City as he can get and still be in the country.

 

Even though he hasn’t seen him in days, Chris still sometimes hears Darren playing his guitar in his room. The melody is soft and little melancholy, a refrain with a touch of sweetness that has Chris wondering just who Darren wrote the song about.  But it feels like one of the many things he can’t ask.

 

_Do you play for a living?  Who is the song about?  Who is it for? Why are you here?_

 

Chris sighs and heads back into his room, closing the door gently behind him.  He skims out of his clothes, leaving them on the floor, and crawls into bed, sighing at the cool sheets against his skin.  He just needs to stop worrying about Darren; he’s just a guest, and even though he’s staying longer than most, he’ll leave eventually, and Chris can carry on with his extraordinarily uneventful little life.


	3. Chapter 3

Chris is just getting dressed to go find something to do with his day when there’s a soft, hesitant knock on his bedroom door. He pauses and frowns; it doesn’t sound like either of his parents’ knocks and the Fords had only asked him for anything twice since they checked in. His cat, Brian, opens one sleepy eye towards to the door, but goes right back to sleeping in his spot at the foot of Chris’ bed, utterly uncaring of human activity around the house.

 

When Chris opens the door, Darren is standing in the hallway, taking up more space than his small frame would suggest.

 

Chris blinks in surprise.  “Hi?”

 

“Hey.” Darren shuffles a little, awkward and strangely contrite with his head dipped and his hands clasped in front of him. Over the week his stubble has grown into a full beard and his hair is a dark mess of curls. Darren looks good, Chris thinks, he almost hates him.

 

“Do you need something?” Chris asks, trying to quell the fluttering in his stomach at having Darren so close so unexpectedly.

 

“Huh?  No, no.  I just-” Darren pauses and takes a short breath as he flexes his hands.  “I just wanted see if you were busy today. Maybe you wanted to hang out?”

 

“With you?” Chris blurts, before he realizes how rude it might sound.

 

Darren just huffs a nerve-filled laugh. “Yeah, with me. I mean, if you want to. Only if you’re not busy or have plans or anything.  I’m sure you’ve got plenty of friends around and-”

 

“No,” Chris interrupts and then blushes. “I mean, I do have friends, but I’m not busy today.  So.”

 

Darren smile brightens the whole hallway. “Awesome.  Ok.  Uhm, have you eaten?  Do you wanna get breakfast out?  Your mom makes a slamming breakfast, don’t get me wrong, but I thought it might be fun to go out?”

 

“Sure, yeah, that’d be nice.  Just uh, lemme get my shoes and I’ll meet you downstairs?”

 

Darren nods and then disappears down the hallway, steps echoing along the way.

 

When he’s gone, Chris slumps heavily against the doorframe, exhaling a long breath.  The turnaround has him feeling dizzy and confused.  He’s spent the last week walking on eggshells in the house, unsure of himself and Darren, and now Darren is asking to spend the day with him out of nowhere.

 

Chris looks down at himself.  He’s wearing his usual shorts and a black tank top. It’s nothing particularly well put together or interesting, but nothing too embarrassing either. His clothes are clean, anyway.  He ducks back into the bathroom to splash water on his face and to make sure his hair isn’t a complete disaster.

  
He pauses in front of the mirror and looks.  He sees two eyes that are generally a pleasing color, a nose too upturned for his liking, and freckles that will stand out ever darker as the summer wears on, no matter how much sunscreen he slathers on himself. But he doesn’t see anything someone like Darren might be interested in.  He’s just a boy at an inn on the beach.

 

Chris shakes his head. “This is not a date,” he says quietly to his reflection and his reflection does not disagree.

 

***

 

Darren is waiting by his car when Chris comes down, twirling his keys around his finger.

 

“We have extra bikes,” Chris says, tipping his head towards the garage.  “Easier than trying to park around town.  And cheaper.”

 

“Feeding the meter’s not really a problem,” Darren says, too casually, but Chris files the comment away with the others Darren has made.  Lives and works in New York.  Has family in San Francisco. A car he could take to drive all the way down here.  Doesn’t mind outrageous parking rates.

 

“But I’m down for bikes,” Darren amends, as though he saw something on Chris’ face that changed his mind.

 

Chris nods and opens up the garage to pull his own bike and one of the spares out.  He checks the air in the tires once a week, because he’s not going to be responsible for one of their guests crashing and hurting themselves.

 

“You do know how to ride a bike, right?” Chris teases, holding back the handlebars from Darren’s reach for a just a moment.

  
Darren just rolls his eyes.  “Yes, sir.  I did graduate from childhood.”

 

Chris grins and lets Darren take the bike. “Is there anything in particular you want to do?  Something you want to see?”  Chris has had to act as tour guide for their guests before.  He generally ends up taking people into town and to the Pier. There are other places he could show them, smaller, hidden places, but those aren’t generally the kind of things people want to see and do when they’re on vacation.  Easy is as easy does.

 

Darren shrugs.  “I’m pretty much up for anything.”

 

“I’m sure you’ve been exploring.”

 

“Not really.  I mean, yeah, I’ve been surfing a lot.  And I had to take care of some things in LA.”

 

Chris blinks.  He hadn’t realized Darren had gone to LA one of the days he was mostly absent.  He wants to ask what things Darren could have had to deal with there, but doesn’t. It doesn’t seem appropriate to pry.  They’re not friends and Darren doesn’t owe him anything.

 

“All right, well, I guess we’ll just figure it out as we go.”

 

The corner of Darren’s mouth twitches as something indescribable and fleeting passes across his face.  “Yeah, I guess we will.”

 

***

 

There’s a little diner, not much bigger than a shake shack, just far enough off the main drag that tourists don’t flock to it in quite the same numbers as the rest of the breakfast joints in town.

 

Even so, the place is crowded and they end grabbing two open stools at the counter.  Chris is almost relieved: two guys sitting at the counter is a bit less like a breakfast date after a night together and more like just a couple of friends grabbing a bite.  At least that’s what he tells himself as Darren’s shoulder bumps into his own and their bare knees brush under the counter as they get settled.  Darren is wearing those ridiculous pink shorts again and the quick slide of warm skin and coarse hair is just as exhilarating as the light touch Darren left on his elbow.

  
Chris is so incredibly fucked he almost doesn’t worry about it. Darren will be gone in quick weeks and Chris will let it go.  Somehow.

 

The waitress is in front of them with a carafe of coffee before either them can grab a menu.

 

“Something to drink to you get you boys started?”

 

“Coffee, please,” Darren answers and turns his mug over.  Chris is relieved he doesn’t order something alcoholic.  A glass of wine with dinner at home is one thing; trying to order a mimosa at a diner when his driver’s license says he’s 19 is something else altogether. And Chris is sure he can’t charm this woman into overlooking the law.

 

Darren takes his coffee with cream and sugar, Chris notes, watching him idly stir as he skims the menu.

 

“So what’s good here?”

 

“Everything.”

 

Darren glances over at him, a tiny grin playing on his lips.  “Helpful.”

 

“Sweet or savory?”

 

Darren blinks slowly, a challenge to Chris’ nervous and unsure flirting.  “Both.”

 

Chris narrows his eyes as Darren’s face breaks into a full smile.  “ _Helpful_.”

 

“Surprise me, man.”  Darren folds his menu up and pushes it away.  “I’m at your mercy.”

 

It doesn’t mean anything, not really, but still, heat shakes along Chris’ limbs and pools in his stomach, making his muscles tighten and his breath catch for the barest of moments.

 

Sometimes he thinks attraction is one of the worst things to feel – uncontrollable and futile and draining.

 

Chris ends up ordering a Belgian waffle with caramelized bacon for Darren and Eggs Benedict for himself because he totally blanks when it comes to his own order.  He’ll manage.  With his stomach in knots he’s not really that hungry after all.

“Ah, a little sweet and a little savory,” Darren says happily, as soon as the waitress disappears with their orders.

 

“Well, you _said_ both.”  
  
“That I did.”

  
Darren twists in his seat, one elbow on the counter so he can more easily face Chris.  His bare knee brushes the outside of Chris’ thigh and Chris shivers.  He hopes Darren doesn’t notice.  He doesn’t need Darren thinking of him as some ridiculous child.

 

“So.”

 

Chris raises an eyebrow and tries to quell his blush. “So.”

 

“Tell me about yourself.”

 

Chris shrugs.  “There’s not much to tell.”

 

“Oh come on.  I don’t believe that.  You rent that big ass house out to strangers all summer.  There’s _gotta_ be a story there.  I want to hear it.”

 

“There’s nothing exciting, really.” Chris wraps his hands around his own coffee mug to give them something to do besides twist nervously in his lap.  “I’m from a little town outside of Fresno.  Ten years ago my parents bought that house and decided to rent it out to vacationers to help pay it off, like a B&B, and…the rest is history. I think they were bored with their lives.  Wanted to spice things up…by investing in property.”

 

“Do you like it?”

  
“I mean, in some ways.  Obviously it’s awesome to live on the beach, and I don’t have to have a regular summer job like a lot of people.  That’s a nice bonus.  But yeah, it can be a little weird, sometimes.  I sort of grew up around strangers, you know?  All these different people coming in and out, week after week. Sometimes people come back and stay with us another time, but not often.  So my life has kind of been this revolving door of people my parents cook for and clean up after.”

 

Darren nods.  “No, that’s definitely kind of weird, but I like it. Very hippie.  I dig it.”

 

“I think my sister likes it more than I do. She’s more outgoing in a lot of ways.  The guests love her. She charms the hell out of people by doing nothing.”

 

“You have a sister?"

 

"Yeah, Hannah.  She’s doing this pre-college thing in London right now.” Chris’ heart pangs for her, just a little. “We Skype when we can, but I think she’s a little busy living the good life with her friends right now.”

 

"Oh man, that’s awesome for her. I love London."

 

"You've been?"

 

"Yeah, dude. A bunch of times. Family traveled a lot.  Paris. Italy.  Wherever my parents wanted to go, really.”

 

Chris nods like it’s the same for him, but it’s not at all. He travels to the same place every year and even that’s a privilege.  His family has never had the kind of extra cash it takes to really travel the world.  They bought the house with Chris’ dad’s inheritance, but the income from the inn isn’t enough to allow them to travel to their hearts’ content. Chris has gotten used to the wonderful things they do have and doesn’t worry much about the things they don’t.

 

"Sounds awesome,” Chris says, but he’s unable to keep the wistfulness out of his voice. 

 

"It was.  It is.  I love just getting out there into the world.  Seeing new things. Trying new stuff.  New food.  Listening to new music. Meeting new people. Fucking up new languages. All of it.  There’s a lot of world out there; I’ve always wanted to see as much of it as I can.”

 

Chris imagines Darren is the kind of man who never wants for company, or a warm touch. 

 

“My brother and I may have gotten into a little trouble here and there,” Darren adds with a fond laugh.  “You know what it’s like with siblings.”

 

That, at least, they have in common.

 

Through breakfast and several cups of coffee their conversation feels easy, more so than at dinner the first night of Darren’s stay at the inn.  Chris lets Darren take the lead, lets him tell stories about growing up in San Francisco and goofy stories about his brother.  He doesn’t say what he did in Los Angeles, or why he lives in New York, or what he’s doing at the Windward Inn on the Pacific coast, and Chris doesn’t ask.

 

When Chris feels like he can’t drink any more coffee before he starts shaking out of his skin, he asks for the check.

 

“I’m paying,” Darren says, reaching for his wallet, and Chris pushes his arm away.  Darren’s skin is very warm under his fingertips.

 

“You don’t have to do that.”

 

“I asked you out to breakfast,” Darren reminds him.

 

“And you’re our guest.”

 

“Not here,” Darren says, surprisingly firm. “Today it’s just you and me hanging out.”

  
Chris swallows as his heart double beats; it sounds too much like a date. “We’ll split it.”

 

“Deal.”

 

Outside the diner after a round of bathroom pit stops, Chris unlocks their bikes and pushes the one towards Darren.

 

“Where do you want to go next?” He asks, slipping his sunglasses back on.

 

“I dunno, man, you pick.  Show me your city.”

 

“It’s not my city,” Chris says, surprisingly defensive. But for however much time he’s spent in Santa Monica over the years, it doesn’t feel like he belongs there. It never has.  But neither does his dusty hometown of planned communities and over-trimmed grass.

 

“Fine,” Darren acquiesces, voice gone soothing like he’s gentling a skittish colt, and Chris wonders then where he calls home. “But you probably still know the area better than I do.”

 

“Have you been to the Pier yet?  It’s basically Tourist Destination Number One. I’m sure plenty of people would tell you to avoid it at all costs, and you absolutely should. But you should still check it out. It’s gaudy and dumb and crowded and overpriced and over in five minutes, but it’s still just one of those _things_ , you know?”

 

“All right then.  Lead on, Braveheart!”

 

Chris blinks, staring at Darren incredulously. “Braveheart?”

 

“You know, it’s what Sir James Douglas allegedly cried out during a battle as he carried Robert the Bruce’s heart in a box.”

 

Chris opens his mouth, and then closes it, and then it opens it again as he tries to find at least a few words to say to that. “Why do you know this?”

 

Darren doesn’t even have the good decency to blush. “I had a thing about the movie in my younger days.  Horribly inaccurate that it is.  Robert the Bruce was the Braveheart, not William Wallace.  And the Scots weren’t wearing kilts in the 13th century. Great soundtrack though. Shame about Mel Gibson.”

 

Chris shakes his head.  “You are…”

 

“Effortlessly charming?” Darren supplies, affecting a brilliantly cheesy smile that has Chris’ heart fluttering happily despite himself.  “Hopelessly endearing?”

 

“I was going to say something like ‘cartoonishly outrageous,’ but those work too.”

 

“You wound me.”

 

Chris gets on his bike, setting his foot against the pedal.  “I think you’ll survive.”

 

***

 

The ride down to the Pier isn’t long, but the view stretched across the glittering ocean to the horizon never gets old. They ride side by side when there’s room on the path, pointing out some of the more colorful characters who inevitably come into view.  Chris laughs when Darren lets go of the handlebars and pedals along with his arms high in the air, because it’s the kind of thing someone like him would do, and it already feels like the best summer of Chris’ life.  He knows he’ll hate to see it end.

 

It’s become a perfectly beautiful summer day with a refreshing breeze and not a cloud to be found smudging the sky. The wind ruffles through Chris’ hair and his tank top, cooling the sweat that’s gathered, and when he looks over at Darren as they park their bikes, he can see darker patches of sweat under his arms.  Chris cheeks warm for reasons beyond the sun shining.

 

The ramp down to the Pier is as crowded as it ever is, and Chris shuffles along next to Darren, trying not to laugh as Darren mimes pushing a particularly slow-moving family over the railing.

 

“Is it always like this?” Darren asks, looking like he’d rather risk getting hit by a car by walking in the lane of traffic heading for parking than continue along in the cattle herd.

 

“Yeah, basically.”

 

“No wonder you don’t come here.”

 

Chris shrugs.  “It’s the Pier.”

 

When they finally get down to the warped and uneven wood of the Pier, Chris is filled with the urge to take Darren’s hand. It’s partly, Chris thinks, to keep Darren from getting lost in the crowd, and partly because he just wants to.  He wants to know what Darren’s big broad palm would feel against his, what it would be like to tangle their fingers together and walk in step.  A couple.  Obvious and known.

 

“Do I smell churros?” Darren asks.  His nose is tilted up hopefully towards the enticing smell that even has Chris’ stomach urging him.

 

“We just ate.”

“Yeah, and do I smell churros?”

 

Chris sighs.  “Come on.”

 

There’s a line at the cart, but it moves quickly. Darren ends up with sugar and cinnamon smeared across his lips within seconds and Chris has to look away, a blush creeping up his cheeks and ears and he thinks of what he would taste like. Overwhelmingly sweet, but with Darren’s beard a rough counterpoint to it.  Chris shivers and is not the least bit cold.  The low level arousal that seems to permeate his being whenever Darren is around spikes heavy in his belly and he takes too big of a bite to give his mouth something to focus on.

 

“Okay, what’s next?” Darren asks, and his voice has a strange hitch in it.  But when Chris looks towards him, Darren is just looking away, turning his gaze towards the endless ocean with his eyes hidden behind his sunglasses. There is pink in his cheeks too, beneath the beard, and Chris assumes it’s just the sun. The skin of his shoulders looks a little pink too.

 

“Uhm, I mean, this is sort of it.  It’s the Pier.  You walk down.  You walk back.  You buy passable churros and hope you don’t get sick.”

 

Darren tears another bite out of the churro with obvious relish. “Then let’s walk.”

 

It’s nice, Chris thinks, walking slowly with Darren down the treacherously uneven Pier, dodging slow moving tourists and families taking up as much room as possible.  Darren chatters away about things Chris only half understands at times. When he sees a woman drawing names on tiny grains of race for tourists he tells Chris about his grandparents in Hawaii, and when they stop to watch a couple of dancers entertain a crowd, he tells Chris about his friends from college.  Chris nods along; eagerly taking in anything and everything Darren wants to tell him about his life while he still can.

 

He doesn’t know why, but he finds Darren fascinating, and the longer he’s around the more Chris wants to know, the more he _needs_ to know.  And it’s a dangerous thing, Chris realizes, staring surreptitiously at Darren as he uses his phone to take photos of the ocean from the crowded edge of the Pier.  Because the inevitable outcome of this, of letting himself get carried away, is heartbreak.  Because Darren will leave.  He will. He’ll go back to New York in a month and Chris will still be in Santa Monica.

 

Chris desperately tries not to think about the fact that come late August he too will be in New York, starting school, and suddenly closer to Darren than by rights he should be.  Serendipity doesn’t happen to people like him; kismet is a phenomenon for another soul.

 

He tells himself, faintly, that if Darren weren’t a guest at the Inn, if they weren’t thrown together because of that strange coincidence, they wouldn’t know each other at all.  He would just be another freshman college kid in the city and Darren would just be some young guy he might pass on the street and it wouldn’t matter at all.

 

He hasn’t said it to Darren; that he’ll be going to school where Darren lives.  Just because he has some stupid crush on their guest doesn’t mean anything; it doesn’t mean Darren thinks of him as anything more than someone who can show him around the city, who can keep him from getting too lonely on his vacation. And he doesn’t want to make Darren feel obligated to hang out with him, or keep in touch with him when the summer is over. Even Chris wants that for himself, even if he already doesn’t want to say goodbye to him.

 

“Do mine eyes deceive, or is that a Ferris wheel I see?” Darren asks, breaking Chris out of his circling thoughts.

 

“Yes,” Chris responds, glancing over at the neon lights of Pacific Park.  “And you can ride that thing yourself.”

 

Darren pouts. “Oh come on!  It looks fun!”

 

“It looks deadly,” Chris counters dryly. He’s pretty sure no one has ever actually died, but there’s always a first time for everything.

 

“There’s a roller coaster too!”

 

Chris wants to protest, not because he doesn’t like amusement parks – he does – but because he’s imagining being crammed into a seat with Darren during the ride, bodies pressed close. But Darren is fairly vibrating with excitement and Chris cannot resist him.

 

“Fine,” he sighs, and Darren whoops, grabbing his hand and tugging him along.

  
Chris lets Darren drag him from ride to ride, cramming them into the back of the giant swinging pirate ship and shoving them onto the Pacific Plunge, where Chris almost loses his sunglasses.  Darren’s enthusiasm, his brilliant smile and barking laugh, is infectious and Chris easily shakes off the gentle melancholy from before.

 

Why shouldn’t he enjoy these weeks? If Darren wants to hang out with him sometimes during his stay then he should just enjoy it, regardless if he feels things for Darren that Darren doesn’t return.  Chris has pushed aside crushes before with minimal heartbreak before.  He’s gotten over the failed attempt with Rob and came out the other side actual friends.  He can do this too.

 

Darren saves the Ferris wheel for last, of course he does, and Chris’ stomach tightens for the briefest moment when the bored attendant asks them if they want to sit together.

 

“Oh yeah,” Darren says, grabbing Chris’ hand once more and pulling him a little closer.  The attendant blinks like she doesn’t care at all and gets them seated properly. 

 

The seats are small and Darren’s thigh is pressed snug and warm against Chris’ as the wheel begins to turn, lifting them into the bright, clear sky.

 

“This is nice,” Darren muses, snapping more photos of the Southern California coastline on his phone.  Chris has a wild need to take a photo of the two of them together, but he doesn’t, he can’t.  “I bet it’s old news for you, though.”

 

Chris shrugs.  “Not really.  It’s still beautiful, you know?  That doesn’t change just because I see it all the time.  The ocean.  The beach.  The way the coast is so uneven.  And the sunsets are still so intense.  They’re never the same.  Every night is different.”

  
He’s going to miss it, miss this, but New York will be its own kind of wonderful.

 

Darren nods.  “It was like that growing up in San Francisco.  You think it’s going to get old, but it doesn’t. It gets in your blood and doesn’t leave, even if you do.”

 

“Yeah.”  Chris agrees.

 

He turns away from the view only to find Darren looking right at him.  He can see himself reflected in Darren’s sunglasses and wishes he could see through to Darren’s eyes, to know what’s there, to get some small hint of what he’s thinking. Darren licks his lips and his throat moves as he swallows and Chris hears nothing but the waves below and his own beating heart.

 

And it’s there, the aching want.  He wants to lean in and kiss Darren, wants it as much as anything in the world.  It would be stupendously cheesy, he knows; a first kiss on the top of a Ferris wheel overlooking the ocean.  But he still does.  It’s in his restless fingertips and sweaty knees and his stark, sudden awareness of the shape of his own mouth, his dry lips.

 

But Darren isn’t leaning in any further and neither is he, and suddenly they’re back at the beginning of the ride and Chris doesn’t remember them moving at all.  He would sigh if his chest weren’t so tight.

  
Darren helps him out of the chair and his hand is warm on the small of Chris’ back as he guides him out of Pacific Park.  The nervous anxiety still sits in Chris’ stomach, heavy and uncomfortable, and Darren is quieter than he’s been all day.

 

“Uhm, do you still want to walk down to the end of the Pier?”  Chris asks. He doesn’t want to go back to the Inn like this, with this tremulous tension between them, not when they’d been having so much fun.

 

Darren’s shoulders twitch and he nods. “Yeah,” he says, decisively. “And I want another churro.” And suddenly the brilliant smile is back on his face, making the world right again.

 

Chris sighs as the tension eases, melting away with the warm breeze.  “How about frozen custard instead?”

 

“Chocolate?”

 

“Of course.”

 

“With strawberries on top?”

 

“If you want them.”

 

“You drive a hard bargain,” Darren says. “But I accept.”

 

***

 

It’s late when they finally get back to the Inn, wheeling the bicycles into the garage as quietly as possible to not disturb the rest of the house.  They’d gotten a late lunch after leaving the Pier, at a little restaurant in town. Darren had eyed the French bistro Rob worked at with interest, but Chris had steered him away from it, not quite ready to make that introduction just in case Rob was on shift. After, they ended up just walking through the town, chatting about anything that came up until the sun disappeared below the horizon.

 

There are still lights on in the house – Mrs. Colfer insists on leaving a few on for any guests who wants to come and go during off hours – but it’s well past dinner and Chris is pretty sure his parents have gone to bed already, or at least retired to their suite.

 

“This was fun,” Darren says outside of his room, voice pitched just above a whisper.  The big house is quiet and even Cooper is asleep; Chris has the strangest feeling like they snuck in after curfew or something and have to be careful not to wake anyone up lest they get in trouble.

 

“Yeah, it really was.”

 

“I know you’ve got other friends,” Darren says. “But uh, whenever you wanna hang out I’m totally down.  It’s not like I’m doing a whole lot else right now.”

 

Chris nods.  There’s no reason not to agree; he can’t imagine Darren will actually want to spend his vacation with him.  “No yeah, that’d be nice.”

 

“Excellent,” Darren says, bopping his head. “Is it cool if I grab the bathroom first?  I wanna take a shower. Unless you gotta piss?”

 

Chris shakes his head and resolutely does not think about Darren naked.  Or wet. Or naked and wet. “No, you go first.”

 

“Awesome.  Okay, well.  Goodnight.”

 

“Night.”

 

Darren disappears into his room with an enigmatic smile and the door closes with a soft click.

 

Chris shakes out his arms, unsurprised that he’d been holding them tense, and shuffles down the hallway to his own room. Brian is asleep on his bed and doesn’t bother to wake up when Chris comes in.

 

“Lazy shit,” Chris mutters fondly, as though he doesn’t also usually spend the long summers sleeping.

 

He flops down on his bed with a heavy sigh. People can exhaust him sometimes, can leave him feeling tired and drained, but he doesn’t feel that tonight. He doesn’t feel weary or overtaxed, even after being in the sun for hours and on roller coasters and stuffing himself full with food all day.  Instead he feels good, he feels relaxed.  It’s a pleasant kind of all over lethargy instead of uncomfortable exhaustion.  He kind of likes it.

 

Chris opens his eyes when he hears the adjoining bathroom door close and the shower start.  The low-level arousal that’s been quietly moving in his veins all day suddenly spikes, flaring down his spine and into his fingers.

 

One hand rests on his stomach, rising and falling with each deep breath, as he listens to the water run.  On the other side of the door, just feet away, Darren is in the shower, naked, and Chris cannot stop himself from thinking about it. He remembers running into Darren in the kitchen that night the week before, and how broad and strong Darren’s shoulders had been, how deep the V of his hips had cut, how dark the hair on his chest had looked, contrasting with the golden tone of his sun-touched skin. Chris breathes in and his hand slides lower.

 

He knows he shouldn’t, knows it’s wrong on a hundred different levels, but he pushes his shirt up and wriggles his shorts down past his hips.

 

His skin is still sun-warm beneath his palms and he’s sure he’s going to wake up tomorrow with a bit of a sunburn where he was exposed.  He rubs slow circles low across his belly, the tips of his fingers stretching to brush through coarse hair with each pass. Chris feels loose and languid, made sleepy by the long hours in the sun despite the quiet want and desire that’s been with him all day because of Darren.

 

His cock is hot against his palm when Chris reaches down, growing harder with each slow, easy stroke.  Chris bites his lip against a soft moan and rests his other hand against his chest, letting his fingers brush softly against his nipples, just the barest hint of added sensation.  It’s easy to think about, Darren standing under the spray of the shower, water sluicing down his small body, his long fingers and soapy palms roving across his body. And maybe he too is touching himself, finding pleasure in his own hand.

 

There is lube in the nightstand next to the bed and Chris bites back the moan that rises in his chest at the cool slide of his wet hand around his cock.  It won’t take him long, not when he’s been thrumming with it all day, and not when there’s the threat of Darren suddenly knocking on his bedroom door in need of something.

 

He imagines it suddenly, that low knock, the door swinging open to reveal Darren, maybe wrapped in a towel, maybe naked. Body wet and his eyes burning with a desire for Chris as he watches Chris jerk off.  And maybe he drops the towel to the floor, exposing his own desire to Chris’ heavy-lidded gaze.  Or maybe he’s already naked and the light from the bathroom spills around him, highlighting muscles and curves and taut lines.

 

Chris thrusts into his palm as he imagines Darren walking towards him, slow, but eagerness bouncing his steps.  He thinks about Darren kneeling on the bed between his spread thighs, leaning in close, hands on his legs sliding up to his hips. His breath catches as he sees Darren’s broad palm on his belly before he kisses him, slow and deep, tongue tasting of promises.  Chris tightens his grip on his cock, twisting on the upstroke and his thighs tighten.

  
Chris is used to keeping quiet, grew up hiding the obvious motion of his wrist under the covers in case someone walked in, and swallowing down the sounds of his pleasure from the guests at the Inn.  He bites his lip and thrusts shallowly into his hand once, twice before his belly tightens and he comes over his hip and down his knuckles.

 

He breathes slowly, deeply, near silent exhalations as he languidly rubs his come into his own skin and listens as the shower shuts off.

 

Chris waits a long minute after he hears Darren’s bedroom door close before getting up to wash his hands.  The boy looking back at him in the mirror has flushed cheeks, reddened lips, and guilt just behind his eyes. Chris laughs softly at himself, shaking his head, before he goes back to bed.


	4. Chapter 4

Chris doesn’t like to use the word “avoiding” for what he’s doing, heading out of the house early when he can and coming back late, even if that means wasting time and money when he’d rather be lounging around. He doesn’t slack on his chores, but if he does them as quickly and brusquely as possible that just means he has more time to be elsewhere – somewhere Darren is not.  And if his parents notice that he isn’t eating as many dinners with them as he used to, they don’t say anything at all. He’s moving to New York at the end of the summer anyway; perhaps they’re just getting used to the idea of him not being around as much.

 

He bothers Rob at work probably more than he should and ends up eating too many crab cakes, and he calls up Jenna, Amber, and Dianna to hang out more than he has in previous summers.  They go bowling and drink at Kevin’s house and generally act like this probably isn’t the last summer they’ll spend all together like this. Chris knows it’ll be some time before he has the money to come back for holidays and the summer.

 

And Chris gets that it’s lingering guilt more than any desire to see his friends driving him out of the house. He can safely say he’s never masturbated to the thought of one of the guests before, but that doesn’t ease the heated shame roiling in his stomach every time he thinks of Darren. Which is all of the goddamn time. It doesn’t help that sometimes at night he can hear the gentle strains of a song being plucked on a guitar from Darren’s room and he knows that Darren is, as always, just on the other side of a couple of doors.

 

“What is going on with you?”  Rob finally asks him.  They’d escaped a particularly hot July day by ducking into a movie theatre to see something Chris can’t even remember the name of now that it’s over.  He’d spent most of the movie staring at the sidekick character and thinking that he had a nose an awful lot like Darren’s, but not his smile.  Or his brilliant eyes.

 

“What?” Chris rouses himself, aware a second too late that Rob has asked him a question.  “Nothing.”

 

“You’re a terrible liar,” Rob chides, knocking his shoulder.  “And everyone in this goddamn town knows it.”

  
Chris sighs.  “Seriously, it’s nothing.”

 

“It’s never nothing.  Come on, man.  You know you can talk to me.”

 

“It’s just – it’s stupid.”

 

“It’s about a guy, isn’t it?” Rob asks, too knowing for Chris’ liking.

 

Chris blushes furiously, hating that it’s always so obvious on his face, and stares down at his feet as they walk. There’s a little café they like, not far from the theatre, and he heads that way without really thinking about it.  There’s a comfort to be found in routine, especially when Darren has come in and so rocked his.

 

“It _is_ about a guy,” says Rob, teasingly triumphant, even though Chris hasn’t said anything.

 

“Rob.”

 

“Tell me about him,” Rob presses and his stupidly white grin is blinding.  “How can you have a guy I don’t know about?  I know everyone you know.”

 

“I don’t have a guy,” Chris mutters, and thinks about Darren and the Ferris wheel and the moment that might have become a kiss if Chris were someone else.  If the circumstances were maybe something else.  If the day had been tomorrow.

 

“But you want one.”

 

“No.”

 

Rob narrows his eyes.  “You want _this_ one.”

 

“You’re not going to let this drop, are you?”

 

“Nope!”

 

Chris would flick Rob on his cheerful cheek if he wasn’t so sure it would result in Rob grabbing him around the neck and tussling his hair.

 

There’s a short line at the café, but plenty of seating in the back under the shifting shade of tall palm trees.  Chris picks the table the farthest away from anyone else, tucked in the back where they can have as private a conversation as possible in the middle of downtown Santa Monica.

 

“I’m not even going to pretend like I’m not going to bother you about this until you spill,” Rob presses, handing Chris his iced coffee.  The afternoon has reached the upper 90s, even this close to the water, and the plastic is already sweating in the heat.

 

“It’s stupid.”

 

“When it comes to romance most things are,” Rob intones, as though at 21 he’s some kind of sage when it comes to these matters.

 

But Chris scoffs at the word.  “This is not about romance,” he says, and they both know it’s a lie.

 

“Who is he?”

 

“You know how I said we had a guy staying with us for like six weeks?”

 

Rob’s eyebrows shoot up his forehead. “You want to fuck one of your parents’ guests?!”

 

“Shh!  Christ, I don’t think everyone heard you.”  Chris glances around furtively, but no one seems to be glaring at them.

 

Rob has the decency to look ever so slightly embarrassed. “Sorry.  But seriously? One of your guests?”

 

Chris rolls his eyes.  “Yes, seriously.”

 

“He must be some guy,” Rob muses and there’s something new behind his eyes.

 

Chris takes a slow breath and draws meaningless patterns in the condensation on his cup.  _Some guy_ doesn’t exactly cover it, doesn’t quite touch on Darren’s imperfect smile and his ridiculous eyebrows, or the way he’d held his breath at the top of that Ferris wheel, as though waiting on something Chris didn’t know he held in his possession.

 

“Yeah,” he sighs, and that doesn’t cover it either.

 

“Are you going to ask him out?”

 

“I can’t,” Chris shrugs. 

 

“Why not?” Rob asks, casually, like the world doesn’t just naturally fall to his feet the way it does, the way it doesn’t for others.

 

“Because.  It’s not that easy.  He’s not – I don’t know anything about him, really.  I don’t even know if he likes guys.  And it’s not like he’s staying here.  He’s gonna go back to New York at the end of his vacation.”

 

Rob shifts, leaning forward interestedly with curiosity sharp in his eyes.  “This guy lives in New York?”

 

“Yeah.  I don’t know what he does there, but yeah.”

 

“ _You’re_ moving to New York,” points out Rob, like Chris isn’t stunningly aware of that fact. His stomach tightens the way it does every single time he thinks of that strange bit of happenstance that’s come upon him so unexpectedly.

 

“That doesn’t mean I’m just going to jump this guy,” Chris says, and tries to not remember how he jacked off to the thought of Darren naked in the shower and the memory of the shadows of his torso. His hand flexes in near unconscious remembrance.

 

“But you want to.”

 

“Yes,” Chris breathes, a soft admittance, as though this was ever a secret.  If he’s going to say this to anyone, it’s going to be to Rob.

 

“So go for it.  What can it hurt?  If he wants it too.”

 

“If you saw him…” He tries to make it a joke, but it’s not really funny at all.

 

“Don’t do that,” Rob chastises, seriousness heavy in his voice.  “But it’s also more than that, isn’t it?”

 

Chris pulls his drink to his lips and the coffee is cold and just shy of bitter on the back of his tongue.  Yes, he thinks.  He wants more from Darren than missed kisses and breathless, tangled, heated moments.  He wants more breakfasts and long days under the sun.  He wants whispered confessions and a palm over his heart. He wants Darren to want that too.

 

“So you see my problem,” he says finally.

 

Rob shrugs, but his face in lined with infinite kindness and Chris is reminded why he kissed him those summers ago, even if the want is no longer there.

 

“Honestly I don’t really see a problem at all. He’s staying with you guys another what? Three weeks?”

 

“Something like that,” Chris nods, as though he hasn’t memorized the calendar.

 

“So…have a little fun.  Or at least find out if he wants to have a little fun with you. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the fruits of your labor.  Don’t waste this summer pining over this guy when you could be sleeping with him instead.”

 

“We hung out the other day.  Like, all day.”  Chris thinks he’ll probably remember it forever.

 

“See?  He likes you too.”

 

“Or he was just bored.”

 

Rob rolls his eyes and kicks Chris’ shin under the table.  “Let’s go with that he likes you and wants to spend time with you and you should totally go after him instead of the less exciting ‘he’s just bored’ route, okay?”

 

Chris sighs and sinks down into his seat. He’s fairly certain Darren doesn’t hate him, but he’s also completely uncertain that he _likes_ him, beyond just a friendly interest in another person. But once more the light touch in the kitchen those long weeks ago comes back to him, and the taut, uncertain moment in the dark of the night when the rest of the house was asleep. And the way Darren did and did not look at him on the Ferris wheel.

 

Chris’ experience in these things is limited, both by choice and by opportunity.  But Darren is right there, and maybe he’s interested, and maybe he’s not, but he’s right there and there’s very little Chris can lose.

 

***

 

Chris is up early the next day, waking with the sun warm across his face because he forgot to completely close the curtains. He takes a slow breath as he stretches and still hears Rob’s voice in his head.

 

He’s right in the way Rob always is; there is no reason to avoid Darren.  If there’s fun to be had with Darren, he should have it, and if there’s more to be found for the rest of the time he’s with them at the beach, then all the better.

 

Chris’ parents are around the little kitchen table when he comes down for breakfast.  And so is Darren.  He looks sleepy, but content, soft around the eyes and mouth with his hair an absolute mess, falling lopsided across his forehead and covering his ears.  Chris is hopelessly gone on him, and he lets it happen.

 

“Morning,” Darren says, offering him the barest hint of a smile.

 

“Morning.”

 

“You want some eggs?” Mr. Colfer asks, already standing up from the table and heading for the stove.

 

“Sure, thanks.”  Chris sits down in his dad’s vacated chair.  The kitchen table is a small thing tucked against the wall, meant for casual bites and quick meals.  In front of Darren is a coffee cup and mostly empty plate, but Chris can see the remains of eggs and bacon and toast and he knows Darren has once again been the recipient of his dad’s culinary skills.

 

“Darren here was just saying he wanted to go down to the beach for the day,” Mrs. Colfer says, as she too stands up from the table, but only to pour a cup of coffee for Chris.

 

“Uhm, okay,” Chris glances over at Darren, who is looking back at him already, and Chris is sort of stupidly in love with the perfect curl falling across his forehead.  “Well, we’ve got plenty of extra towels you can use and-”

 

“I was hoping you’d come with me?”  Darren interrupts, oddly shy, but he doesn’t pull his gaze from Chris’ face.

 

Chris pauses, coffee halfway to his lips. “Me?”

 

“Yeah.  I mean, unless you’re busy?”

 

Chris licks his lips and does not miss the way Darren’s eyes track the nervous motion of his tongue.  He wonders then what he _has_ missed between them, if anything.  “Yeah, I mean.  No. I’m not busy.”

 

“So you’ll come?”

 

“Yeah,” Chris repeats, nodding.  “I’m not sure if anyone else is free today, but I can check.”

 

Darren ducks his head a little.  “Oh, uh, I was thinking maybe it could be just us?”

 

And suddenly Chris wishes they were alone in the kitchen; that his father wasn’t standing behind him scrambling eggs and his mother wasn’t sitting next to him pointedly reading a newspaper. Heat crawls up his spine to his cheeks.

 

“Yeah,” he says, and swallows down the crack that threatens to break through his voice.  “That’d be nice.”

  
Darren’s grin brightens the whole damn kitchen with its exuberance. “Awesome.”

 

***

 

After breakfast, Chris disappears into his room to slather on sunscreen and throw some stuff for the day in a floppy bag. He doesn’t let himself fret about what to wear, just tugs on some trusted swim trunks and a tank top. It doesn’t really matter anyway; if they’re going to the beach he’s probably going to end up taking his shirt off and that’s a _whole_ other set of neurosis to worry about.

 

Spending every summer at the beach the way he has, Chris has lived more hours with his shirt off than he ever thought he would. His first years at the Inn, right after his parents bought the house, had been easy.  He was too young to really care what he looked like, or for anyone else to notice.  Later, as teenager, he spent a summer wearing a t-shirt and refusing to get in the ocean because the baby fat that had melted off his friends hadn’t yet slipped off him.  But running and swimming and biking and all the ways he’d filled his days had eventually done their work. He might not have the best body on the beach, but he’s happy enough with it.

 

But being shirtless in front of Darren is something else entirely.  Darren with the soft line of his abs and the deeper cut of his hips, the coarse spray of his chest hair and the few freckles and moles that dot his rich skin. Chris hasn’t felt this aware of his own body, his own shape and the space he takes up, since the summer Rob showed up less reedy and more lanky, with more hair on his chest than on his face.

 

And there’s a different awareness too, with Darren, the thought of skin and hair and sweat and all the things a body can do with clothes forgotten on the floor.

 

Chris squares his shoulders, exhales, and heads back downstairs.  He will not live a life of avoidance, not anymore.

 

Darren is waiting for him by the front door in his own bright red swim shorts and a striped tank top.  Cooper is at his feet, tailing wagging enthusiastically as Darren scratches his flanks.

 

“Who’s a good boy?” Darren coos to Cooper, who is wriggling so hard he can barely stand.

 

“You ready?”  Chris asks and Darren looks up.

 

With a shiver, Chris doesn’t miss the way Darren’s gaze drags slow up his bare legs before finding his eyes.  And maybe, just maybe, Chris has misread the first weeks of Darren’s stay with them after.

 

“Yeah.  Can we bring Coop?”

 

Chris snorts.  “I wouldn’t recommend it.  He rolls in the sand _immediately_. We can take him to the beach another time.”

 

Darren exaggerates a frown down at Cooper. “Sorry buddy, your dad says no. But next time.”

 

Cooper barks once and skitters off to places unknown in the house as Chris chuckles fondly.

 

“I like him,” Darren says.  “We never had pets growing up.”

 

“No?”

 

“Allergic and my mom had a bit of a clean freak vibe going on.  Don’t mention it to her, though.”

 

Chris feels his eyebrows crease.  “We have a cat here in the house.”  He thinks about how much cat hair is probably in his bed.

 

“I know.  It’s not that bad.  I’ve got it under control.”  Darren grins and shoves on a pair of sunglasses.  “Well, are we going or what?”

 

Chris pats the bag hanging from his shoulder. “I’m ready.”  He stretches his arm out, leading Darren out the front door.

 

Darren starts to head around the house, towards the steps that lead down to the beach.

 

“Where are you going?” Chris calls out to him.

 

Darren turns and the sun catches on the line of his cheekbone with breathtaking clarity.  “To the beach?”

 

“Yeah no,” Chris shakes his head.  “I’ll show you a better place to go.”

 

“Are you taking me to your secret hideaway cave?” Darren asks, stepping towards him and grinning impishly, and Chris so wishes he could see his eyes.

 

“There are less touristy spots of the beach, if you know where to go,” he says, and doesn’t think about creating a different kind of hidden place with Darren.  A nest of sheets and pillows with the sun and fresh ocean air spilling into the drowsy room from the open windows.

 

“And you know?”

 

“Of course I do,”

 

It feels good, Chris thinks, this shaky kind of confidence.  It’s flirting, he knows, or near enough, and Darren is not shying away from it. It fills Chris’ stomach with nerves and reddens his cheeks, but he doesn’t want to pull away from it either. Because there is power there too, the sharp taste of it on his tongue.  Whatever happens in the next weeks will happen, or it won’t. And following where it goes just might be easier than running away.

 

It’s a quick enough bike ride to where Chris is thinking of, which is a blessing because no matter how often Chris does it, biking with a big bag is just awkward.  The piece of beach isn't far from the Inn, but it takes them far enough away from the bulk of the tourists so more often than not they get a little stretch of sand all to themselves.

 

Here the cliffs of the coastline begin to rise up from the shore and they have to trek down an old, steep wooden staircase to get to the sand.  The brightly painted and weathered houses above have their own private staircases leaning down, though Chris rarely sees anyone using them. He often wonders what the point of owning a beachfront house is if you've somehow grown weary of the ocean. Chris hasn’t yet lost the feeling of amazement and bone deep contentment when he stands with his feet in water and the sun on his face.

 

"Dude, this is awesome," Darren says, looking around with a face filled with wonder.

 

"Yeah, I like it here." It feels like they've been dropped down into a secluded little oasis. Warm sand and empty surf and the clean salt scent of the ocean.

 

"It's almost quiet, you know? Aside from the waves.  It's kind of like Central Park, actually.  The way noise is somehow muffled.”

 

The reminder of the imminence of New York pangs in Chris’ chest but he breathes through it and smiles.   "Not quite the same,” he muses, more for himself.  “But yeah. I get it.”

 

Chris drops his bag to the sand.  It’s an old thing, beat up and repaired, and he doesn’t mind it getting a little dirty.  “So, do you have a plan?  For what you want to do today?”

 

Darren shrugs.  “Not really.  I brought a book.  And a Frisbee.” He goes to shove his hands in his pockets, but his swim trunks have none. “I, uh, really just kind of wanted to hang out, you know?  Swim. Nap.  Relax."

 

Chris thinks he hears a few missing words in the spaces of Darren breath.  “With me?” He hedges, belly tight against the impending answer.  It’s an anticipation he’s growing familiar with.

 

And there is an unmistakable blush staining Darren’s cheeks beneath his dark beard.  “Yeah,” he says, voice pitched just above the crashing waves.  “With you."

 

Something in Chris’ chest breaks a little and is sealed up with a feeling like hope.

 

Chris shakes his big, blue beach towel out on the sand. There’s a gentle breeze that day, not enough to blow the towels out of place, but he still sets his shoes and bag at the corners of the towel, just in case.

  
He kneels down on the towel just in time to look up and see Darren tugging his shirt off.  There’s no real grace to the movement, no smolder or tease, just the smooth flexing of muscles and the stretch of skin glowing burnished in the sunlight. Want burns low in Chris’ gut and he looks away from the hair below Darren’s bellybutton to focus on taking his own shirt off.  He doesn’t check to see if Darren is watching him too, just pulls the shirt over his head and tosses it into his bag before settling down on his towel.  He doesn’t need to compare and contrast; he knows what he looks like.  Pale skins and freckles stand out on every beach.

 

“I’m probably going to fall asleep,” Darren warns, a few minutes after the sound of his shifting around has disappeared. The sun is already warm, working deep into Chris’ muscles and he relaxes into the towel and the sand below.

 

“Did you put sunscreen on?”  He asks, thinking of Darren’s broad, bare shoulders, even despite his darker skin tone.

 

“Yeah, before we left.”

 

“I’ve got more.  For later.”

 

“Awesome.”

  
The sun is bright behind Chris’ closed eyes, but muted enough by his sunglasses that it’s okay.  He drifts in and out of a light doze, lulled by the rhythmic collapse of waves and the breeze rustling through the palm fronds.  He can’t hear Darren breathing, but Chris imagines that he can. The gentle in and out of breath, the soft swell of Darren’s belly as he inhales and the flex as he exhales.

 

He wonders how difficult it will be to give this up come the fall, when he packs his bags and heads for the undoubtedly small room in a shared apartment waiting for him in New York City.  He’s lived in the desert of California and at the beach his whole life; it’s what he knows, what he’s used to. 

 

Chris visited New York once, years ago with his parents.  He remembers thinking it must have been an unseasonably cold fall until he overheard the hotel concierge telling another guest what a lovely week they were having. But the city had felt alive in a way that his tiny, dusty desert town or Santa Monica never had. And so had he. The cabs and lights and endless motion had been invigorating, if exhausting.  And then there was the theatre.  His parents had budgeted one Broadway show for them to see, but when the final curtain had dropped and they’d spilled out onto the busy streets, Chris had turned around and demand to see more.

 

And on the last night of their stay, collapsing into his overpriced double bed he was sharing with his sister, Chris had told himself he’d come back.  To stay.

 

High school had been an exercise in getting by. Not fitting into his town, he didn’t fit into his school either.  He’d found the school’s literary magazine in freshman year and the drama club in sophomore.  And even if by graduation and securing a spot at NYU he still didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do with his life, he at least had an idea, and that idea was still leading him to New York.

 

And now it’s happening.  The summer will end and he’ll pack his bags and finally get back to where little pieces of his life started.  He hopes that whatever he’s leaving behind in the west – his friends, the beach, the safety of his parents – will be made up for by what he’s gaining on the new coast.

 

“Chris?”

 

Chris rouses from his half-sleep at the sound of his name.  “Hmm?” His body feels loose and heavy.

 

“Are you awake?”

 

“Sort of.”

 

There is a pause and Chris can hear Darren shifting around.  Chris pries his eyes open, blinking against the bright light.  When he turns his head he can see Darren sitting up on his towel, looking back at him.

 

“Are you bored?” Chris asks.  Spending hours baking under the sun isn’t for everyone; he only likes it himself sometimes.

 

Darren shrugs, but he’s smiling a little. “Kind of?  But like, I don’t want to disturb you or anything. I’m good if you’re good. I’ve got my book.”

 

Chris slowly sits up, feeling the flex in his abs as he does.  “No it’s good. We can do something.”

 

“Can we walk a bit?” Darren asks, glancing down the stretch of the beach.  “Is it safe to leave our stuff?”

 

Chris nods.  “Yeah, I didn’t bring anything important.  And we’re out of most of the tourist range.” He pushes himself to his feet and does not cross his arms over his chest when Darren tilts his head back to look up at him.  At least he’s taller than Darren.

 

“More sunscreen first, though,” Chris says, grabbing the spray bottle out of his bag.

 

Darren gets to his feet, brushing sand from the back of his swim shorts that’s naturally managed to get on him already. “All right, you do me first.”

 

Chris blinks and then blushes.  “Turn around,” he says and is proud his voice hasn’t pitched up into the stratosphere.

 

He’s put sunscreen on a hundred different people, including Rob, and at one time in his life that was the height of his sexual experience.  This should be no different, but it is.  Of course it is.

 

The spray can makes it easier, but Chris still runs his hand across the broad swath of Darren’s naked back, rubbing the sunscreen into smooth, heated skin and noting the patterns of darker freckles that dot his shoulders.  And the birthmark on the back of his shoulder right where someone might bite down, if they were just a few inches taller than him.

 

Chris spreads sunscreen across Darren’s narrow waist and Chris suddenly realizes how big his hand looks on Darren, how pale it is against Darren’s darker skin.  Darren exudes so much presence, so much life, that Chris hadn’t quite noticed that Darren was smaller than him.  Shorter, yes, but slimmer too, narrow in the waist despite the roped muscles in his arms and legs that Chris has dreamt about. And more.

 

Heat builds inside of Chris, but he tamps it down. His swim shorts can only conceal so much and even if, even if Darren is maybe a little bit interested in him, it’s just not the done thing to poke Darren with his dick while trying to protect him from the sun.

 

“All right,” Chris says, stepping back. “I think you can get the rest.”

 

When Darren turns around his cheeks are pink. “You next.”

 

“What?”

 

Darren takes the can of sunscreen out of Chris’ hand. “If I’m not getting skin cancer then you aren’t either.  Turn around.”

 

Chris swallows and slowly turns.  It’s such a cliché, he knows, having the object of his affections rub sunscreen into his naked skin with slow, careful, nearly reverent strokes.  But Darren’s hand is warm and heavy down his spine and across his shoulders, sliding with firm strokes around his waist, just enough pressure not to tickle too much and it feels heavenly.  And when Darren’s thumb digs into his shoulder blade with just an extra bit of pressure Chris’ toes curl in the sand.

 

“Okay,” Darren says when Chris is thoroughly covered in sunscreen and definitely turned on.  “Now we can go.”

 

The sand is hot under their feet as they walk and Chris guides them closer to the water where the surf helps keeps everything cool.  A few sailboats glide slowly along the horizon, sunlight catching in white sails and seagulls fly mysterious patterns overhead.

 

“You’re quiet,” Darren comments, after a few minutes.

 

“Just thinking.”

 

“About what?”

 

There’s a hundred different things Chris could say, myriad things he could ask.  About Darren, his life, what he’s doing here.  But Chris settles on one.

 

“You haven’t really said what you do,” Chris finally questions.  “For a living. I guess I was wondering.”

 

“Ah.  Well, I work in theatre.”  There’s a pause.  “Mostly.”

 

Chris glances askance at Darren, who is looking down at his own feet as they walk.  “Oh yeah?”

 

“Yeah,” Darren confirms.

 

“Doing what?”

 

“Uhm, music.  For shows.  You know, the score?  Lyrics. That stuff.  I’m sort of thinking about some acting but I don’t really know if it’s for me.  That part I’m still figuring out.  But I’m a musician. A songwriter.  That’s what I do.  It’s what I love.”

 

Chris is not surprised; Darren brought a guitar on his vacation or whatever this is for him.  And Chris has lain awake in bed in the dark listening to Darren to strum out plaintive notes well into the night.

 

“That sounds awesome.  I love the theatre,” Chris confesses, as though it’s some sort of secret.

 

Darren brightens at that, looking at Chris with a new expression, only partially hidden by his sunglasses. “Do you?”

 

“Yeah, I’m sort of getting into it myself. Kind of.”  Chris swallows, acutely aware of how little he talks about this.  To anyone at all. “I uh, I write. Sort of.  I’m trying, anyway.”

 

“No shit.”  There’s surprise in Darren’s voice, but not meanly so, and Chris realizes how little he’s said about himself to Darren, how little he’s revealed about the things that matter.

 

“Yeah, I’m starting school for it.”

 

“Starting school?”

 

Chris nods and his chest is so tight it hurts. It’s not like it’s a secret; he’s going to college.  His family knows. His friends know. His bedroom at home in his tiny desert town is all but packed for the move east.  But telling Darren feels like struggling for the first words of an entirely different kind of conversation.

 

“Yeah.  NYU.”

 

Chris can feel the air still around them as Darren’s head whips around so fast Chris worries around his neck.

 

“NYU?”  Darren’s voice is strange, tempered with a new tone somewhere past surprise.

 

“I’ll be a freshman.”

 

“Oh, okay.”  The catch in his voice has become something else, something leading that makes the hairs on Chris’ arms and the back of his neck rise, despite the hot sun beating down on them.

 

Chris runs a hand through his hair, feeling the sweat that’s gathered at his scalp, the same sweat that’s breaking out across his lower back.  Has Darren thought him too young to think of as anyone beyond a boy whose parents run a B&B? Is that why he kept pulling away whenever Chris thought they might be heading somewhere new? It seems so stupid to consider that Chris worries it might actually be true.  The almost kiss at the top of the Ferris wheel. The taut moments in the kitchen. A brush of skin that feels like it happened months ago and not weeks.  Had Darren held himself back because he worried Chris was underage? He knows sometimes he looks younger than is, but he thought in the last few years his face had finally caught up with his body.  Or is he just over-thinking this like he does so much else?

 

“And you’re moving to New York then,” Darren says, as though he’s picking up in the middle of a conversation he’s been having with himself while Chris remained silent.

 

“I am, yeah.  At the end of the summer.”

 

Darren nods to himself and Chris wishes he could see his eyes, to know what lies behind them.  “Where are you staying? The dorms?”

 

“Actually no.  Going to be renting an apartment with two other NYU students.”

 

A smile finally quirks Darren’s mouth. “How’d you manage that?”

 

“They’re older,” Chris says.  “Juniors.  Their third roommate graduated in June and my sister is randomly friends with that guy’s younger brother through her study abroad program, and somehow it got around that I was going to be starting in the fall and well-”

 

“Bob’s your uncle?” Darren cuts in, and Chris laughs.

 

“Exactly.”

 

“Pretty sweet set up for a freshman.”

 

Chris shrugs.  “Yeah well, I sort of feel like I’ve paid my dues when it comes to living with random strangers.”  He’s been doing it for 10 years.  He’d be renting his own apartment in the city if he thought he could ever afford it.  Perhaps one day.

 

Darren snorts.  “You still will be, in a way.”

 

“But it won’t be a dorm,” Chris challenges. “And we’ll have two bathrooms,” he adds, because he can.  “Well, one and half.  It’s a weird set up.”

 

“Well shit.  I don’t even have two bathrooms.  Only have the one roommate though.”

 

A million new questions about Darren flood Chris’ mind, struggling for supremacy, and if there was ever a time to ask Darren more about his life this is it.

 

“I hope it’s not too weird of me to ask, but-”

 

“Twenty-three.”

 

Chris blinks, thrown.  “What?”

 

Darren tilts his head.  “I’m twenty-three.”

 

“Oh, okay.”

 

“Was that not what you were going to ask me?”

 

Chris shakes his head, smiling a little at Darren’s presumption, though it does answer one of the things he’s been wondering about.  Four years isn’t so bad, he thinks. Four years is doable, manageable.  Certainly not illegal.  And the space between those years narrows every year they get older.

 

“Oh, well, please continue with your line of questioning.”

 

Chris takes a breath.  “What are you doing here?”  He asks in a rush, jumbling the words.  It’s not the subtle, eloquent inquiry he’d hoped for, but it does the job.

 

“Ah.”  There’s hesitation in Darren’s voice, and Chris glances over to see him rubbing his bearded jawline with his palm.

 

“You don’t have to tell me,” Chris hedges. “I know I’m just a-”

 

“Don’t do that,” Darren interrupts, suddenly sharp. Then his shoulders relax and Chris watches his stomach flex as he exhales.  “It’s fine.  Truth is I really don’t know.  I had some shit going on and I wanted to get away.  I ended up Googling vacation rentals at like, 3 o’clock one morning while drunk and your place came up with the best ratings and availability, so I took it.  Booked it right then and there.  I wanted to get as far away as I could without dealing with the hassle of leaving the country.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Bunch of stuff, really.” Darren flicks his wrist. “For one I broke up with my boyfriend.”

 

Chris freezes.  “Your boyfriend?”  He asks it before he can stop himself, realizing too late how it might sound.

 

The look Darren gives him is unexpectedly wary and searching, as though he’s worried he’s said something sharp and dangerous. “Yeah.  Is that…is that a problem?”

 

Chris shakes his head.  “No.  God no,” he says vehemently. “No problem here.  That uh, that would be a little hypocritical of me.”

 

Darren face is still, like a pond on a windless summer day, and then he smiles, just barely, a ripple.  “I see.”

 

“So, you guys broke up?” Chris asks, steering the conversation back to slightly less fraught ground.

 

“Yeah.  It wasn’t like, a huge blow up or anything.  It wasn’t tragic.  You know how sometimes it’s the right time, but the wrong person? Or the right person at the wrong time?”

 

Chris presses his lips together.  He really does not.  Rob was neither the right person, nor was it the wrong time. It just wasn’t anything more.

 

“Which was he?”

 

Darren shrugs.  “I don’t know.  Maybe both.  Maybe neither. I mean, it was good when it was good, don’t get me wrong.  Just because a relationship ends doesn’t mean it was a bad relationship. It wasn’t at all. We were really happy together.” Daren spreads his hands out in front of him and turns his palms towards the sky. “And then we weren’t.”

 

Chris suddenly wants Darren to stop talking about this unnamed ex-boyfriend.  He doesn’t want to picture Darren with someone else, and he certainly doesn’t want to picture Darren happy with someone else.  Jealousy is an unfamiliar beast for Chris, and one he doesn’t want to become acquainted with.

 

“Were you guys living together?”

 

“No, but I guess we were kind of moving that way. He’s an actor. It was part of the whole…thing. His rehearsals and auditions. My work.  There just wasn’t enough time for each other, in the end.  Like I said. It’s not a big tragedy. It sucks, you know? Of course it sucks. It happened a few months ago and it’s fine, I’m fine.  But it was just one more… _thing_ in my life. The break-up.  The project I’d been hired for suddenly getting tabled. My dad was sick. On their own totally things I could have handled no problem.  Gone on my merry way off to the next thing.  But everything happened all at once and I just, yeah, I just needed to get away.”

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

Darren shakes his head at that, huffing a laugh. “God, don’t be. This has been wonderful. This has been just what I needed. The beach.  The space.  The fresh air.  New York is great, but damn, sometimes the soul just needs a little room to breathe.” Darren beats his palm against his chest, over his heart, and Chris feels the pressure against his own skin.

 

“Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”

 

“I really am.”  Darren looks over at him, eyes still aggravatingly hidden behind his dark sunglasses, but the smile curving his lips is clear as anything. “And you’re part of that.”

 

Chris blinks, lurching awkwardly as he suddenly loses his footing in the sand.  “What?”

 

“I mean it.  I know we haven’t spent a ton of time together, but I’ve really liked hanging out with you these last weeks.”  Darren pauses and his belly shivers as he takes a deep breath. “I like you.”

 

A blush spreads all the way down Chris’ body to his navel and his heart pounds so loudly he’s sure Darren can hear it over the surf. “Yeah?”  It’s such a small, stupid word but it could mean so much.  Or it could mean nothing at all.

 

“Yeah, man.”

 

Chris feels like he’s fourteen again and wants to slip Darren a note after 3rd period asking him if he _like_ -likes him. 

 

“I like you too,” he allows, softly, because it’s at least some piece of the truth.  There is possibility there, now, where there was only the promise of disappointment before.  New York lies ahead as their opportunity for more: Darren leaving at the end of his stay no longer means Chris will never see him again; and the shades of his admission push open a door Chris hadn’t even considered was unlocked.

 

“Cool…” Darren trails off, as though there’s something more he wants to say, but doesn’t know what, or how.  And maybe this is enough for now.

 

Chris feels like they’re standing at the water, waiting for the tide to come in; like the ocean is edging towards their toes and they haven’t quite decided if they’re going to step in or not.

 

“Hey, are those caves?”

 

Darren’s left-field question snaps Chris out of his thoughts.  He follows Darren’s gaze to a spot a couple hundred feet down the beach.  They’ve walked farther than he realized, carried along by conversation and the intrinsic pull of Darren himself. Here rock rises up from the wet sand and juts out from the cliffs, creating a little network of caves revealed when the tide goes out and flooded when it comes back in.

 

Chris nods.  “Little ones, yeah.”

 

Darren’s face is suddenly wide open and excited. “Fuck,” he exclaims. “We gotta check them out.”

 

Chris squints along the shore towards the nooks and caves he’s quite familiar with.  Everyone who comes this way down the beach inevitably discovers the cracks in the rocks and the ways to get to them.  “Yeah, sure.  We can do that sometime.  The beach isn’t going anywhere.”

 

“What do you mean?” Darren asks, cocking his head. “Let’s go right now. They’re right here.”

 

“The tide is coming in,” Chris points out. “It’s going to get too dangerous too fast.”  Despite the relative calm of the ocean all around, here, and in other spots up and down the coast, the waves crash hard against the craggy rocks in this area, forced into violent movement by the sharp incline of the ocean floor and the narrow passageways created by the boulders.  Chris knows well how a riptide can come from nowhere, and how easily skin can break against the sharp edges.

 

“Oh come on,” Darren pouts.  “We'll be quick.  In and out.”  He pauses, a roughish grin on his face. “Which is _not_ what she said.  Or he.”

 

Chris laughs, in spite of himself.  “Fine.  We’ll take a peek.  But I’m serious. You have to wade through some deep water to get into the caves.  Once the tide comes in you’re stuck.  It really is too dangerous to try and swim out.  People get hurt.”

 

“Okay, okay.  Really quick.”

 

Chris is not expecting it when Darren bursts into a run, sprinting towards the rocky outcroppings, naked feet slapping against the wet sand as he angles towards the water.

 

“Come on!”  Darren shouts back over his shoulder and Chris begrudgingly jogs to catch up.

 

It’s louder here, cooler, where the rocks create barriers for the waves to crash upon and build shadows against the sun.

 

“This is so cool,” Darren says, wading deeper into the water and touching a rock that’s jagged with razor sharp clams and coral. Chris and Rob and everyone they know have at least one scar from getting too close to these rocks over the years.  It’s a painful lesson they all learn eventually.

 

“It’s definitely different from over by the pier,” Chris muses.  “Really wouldn’t want to try and surf here.”  Where the rest of the beach feels tame, combed smooth and made useable by decades of the tourist industry, here it feels wild.  Out of control.  Reckless the way Chris sometimes feels around Darren.

 

“Is that how you get into the caves?” Darren asks and points towards a narrow pathway barely visible between rocks and under a low overhang. The tide has brought the water waist high and Chris can feel the power of the current tugging at him, making it hard to stand up straight.  He wishes he were at least wearing water shoes; the tender bottoms of his feet have been victims to sharp edges hidden under the sand before.

 

“Yeah,” he confirms.  “But I really wouldn’t try it right now.  You could get seriously…”

 

But Darren is already moving away, pushing his way towards deeper into the water, using his hands on the rocks to try and help guide himself towards the shallow caves that are just in sight, just in reach. It’s not that far, truth be told, but Chris can feel that the tide are growing too strong, knocking him off balance even though he’s spent as much time here as anyone else.

 

“Darren, I really think-”

 

And Chris watches as Darren slips on something unseen beneath the waves, loses his footing and stumbles, nearly going under the water.  His face twists in shock and pain as his body jerks violently and Chris reaches for him even though he knows he’s not close enough to take hold.

 

Chris’ heart leaps into his throat. “Darren?!”

 

“Fuck!” Darren shouts, voice tight, strained as he rights himself.

 

“Are you ok?!”

 

“I’m fine.”  He shakes water out of his eyes.  “Fucking fuck.  I’m fine. I think I just, yeah, I hit my leg on something.  Fucking riptide. Jesus.”

 

“Get back here,” Chris calls out, heart still hammering.  He’s too worried to say _I told you so_. A few summers back Mark broke his arm getting thrown against a rock by a wave that seemed to come out of nowhere.  He ended up needing six stitches to close the gash left by the razor edge of coral.

 

Darren nods shortly.  “Yep, good idea.”

 

Chris carefully makes his way out of the tangle of rocks towards the calm safety of shore, keeping his eye on Darren, who is clearly moving slower than he had before.

 

When he finally emerges from the water Chris can see a long scrape on his thigh, from his kneecap stretching up.  As he takes a few slow steps, dark red blood begins to well from the wound, sliding down his calf, thinned by the seawater streaming from his swim shorts.

 

“Well that looks gross,” Darren comments, pausing to look down at it.

 

Without thinking, Chris reaches for Darren’s hand, pulling him farther up the beach, away from the water.  “Are you okay?” He asks again, realizing how inane the question is and not really caring.

 

“Yeah.  Stings.  But yeah.” Darren peers at his leg, trying to examine the scrape.  The skin is broken in several places, but it doesn’t look there’s any grit or dirt embedded in it.

 

“I don’t think it needs stitches,” Chris says, and he touches his fingers to Darren’s thigh, near the wound, careful not to cause any pain.  He’s seen worse, certainly.

 

“This is embarrassing,” Darren mutters.

 

“Are you okay to walk?”

 

Darren nods.  “Yeah, it’s not broken or anything.  That fucking hurt, man.”

 

“It’s gonna hurt worse tomorrow,” Chris warns, but without sting.  Darren’s bound to end up with one hell of a bruise though, but at least it’ll be a story to tell his friends.

 

The walk all the way back to their towels seems to take forever, and not just because Darren is limping.  Darren cracks jokes and tells stories about people Chris doesn’t know, but Chris can hear the strain in his voice, almost hidden by his bravado.

 

Once they get to their little campsite, Chris grabs his shirt from his bag and presses it to the angry wound on Darren’s thigh.

 

Darren hisses and reflexively tries to pull away. “Don’t,” he protests too late. “You’ll ruin your shirt.”

 

“I’ve got others.  And the towel is covered in sand.  I just want to be sure it’s not worse than I think it is.”

 

After a long moment, where all Chris can hear his Darren’s breath and his own, sliding into syncopation, Chris carefully lifts the shirt. The bleeding has mostly stopped; the scrape isn’t deep, but it still looks pretty nasty at this stage.

 

Unbidden, Chris suddenly thinks about how close they are, and how both of his hands are now on the warm skin of Darren’s bare thigh.

 

“We should get back to the house,” Chris says, straightening up.  “Clean this up. It doesn’t look like you’ve got anything stuck in it, but we should still take care of it and slap some gauze on it.”

 

“Were you a Boy Scout?”

 

Chris shakes his head as he gathers their stuff up. “No, but I do have first aid training.”

 

Darren smiles.  “Of course you do.”

 

***

 

When they get back to the house, Chris is thankful that for once his parents are elsewhere and that the Fords have checked out. Another couple is set to check in the next morning, but for now the Inn is empty and quiet.  They’re alone.

 

“Sit down,” Chris says, gently steering Darren into the kitchen and towards a chair.

 

Darren sits gingerly, stretching his leg out with a wince.  “This sucks,” he complains, poking morosely at his thigh.

 

“I think you’re going to live.  Hold on.”  Chris disappears from the kitchen to grab supplies from the hallway cupboard. The house is stocked for all manner of minor injuries their guests might incur, from cuts to sunburns to bee stings.  Chris is well prepared for dealing with a little scrape.  And growing up with an adventurous sister helped.

 

“You can say it,” Darren mutters when Chris come back into the kitchen.

 

He pulls up another chair next to Darren. “What?”

 

“ _I told you so_.”

 

Chris shakes his head, smiling softly. “I’m not quite that petty.” He sets the hydrogen peroxide and gauze on the kitchen table.  “Not right now, anyway.”

 

“Well _I’m_ that dumb.”

 

“It happens.  Luckily I think I’m going to be able to save the leg,” he teases and Darren flicks him on the shoulder.

 

It’s then, with the light tap of Darren’s finger against his bare skin, that Chris remembers he’s still not wearing a shirt, that his is crumpled in a ball on the kitchen floor with the rest of their stuff. And he remembers too those long weeks ago, running into Darren in the dark hours of the night in this very same kitchen, and how then it had been Darren’s vulnerable skin bare to the moonlight.

 

“I could rock a peg leg,” Darren muses as Chris douses a cotton ball with the peroxide.

“I’m sure you’d be a dashing pirate,” Chris responds lightly, flicking his gaze up to Darren’s, just for a moment meeting his wide, whiskey eyes.

 

“When I was little I wore an eye patch for a week and pretended to be a pirate.”

 

“Just because?”

 

“My brother accidentally hit me in the face with a baseball.”  Darren hisses as Chris efficiently cleans the scrape on his thigh with the cotton ball, using Darren’s brief distraction to get it over with.  “Hurt more than that, though.”

 

“Sorry,” Chris offers.  He’s probably over doing it, but he doesn’t really want to risk any sort of infection.

 

“S’okay.  I should have expected it.”

 

Chris quickly tapes a rectangular piece of gauze over the raw scrape. “It’s really not that bad,” he says.  “Keep it clean; you’ll be right as rain in a couple of days.  Maybe put some ice on it for the bruise.”

 

Suddenly there are warm fingers on his wrist, holding him gently in place, and Chris looks up again to find Darren staring at him, right into him.  His eyes are serious, but there’s something like a smile flickering in the corners of that expressive mouth.  Chris’ heart thuds painfully and his stomach tightens.  Darren is so close to him, holding his wrist and angling towards him.

 

“Thanks,” Darren murmurs, quiet as a summer’s night breeze.

 

“Anytime,” Chris answers, his voice high in his throat. “I mean, not that I want you to do this again, but-”

 

And suddenly he’s cut off by the impulsive press of lips against his own, stopping his words and his breath.  Chris gasps into it, surging forward without a thought, body moving almost on its own.  Darren’s kiss is warm, satisfying in ways no single kiss should be, and Chris can feel it down to his bones; a slow, surging warmth.  His eyelashes flutter as Darren’s mouth moves slowly against his; drawn out, coaxing kisses that have Chris’ breath catching and his heart racing.

 

 _Yes_ , he thinks, fuzzy with it.  _Finally_.

 

Darren’s beard is rough against Chris’ lips and chin, but he tastes like salt and sand and Chris shivers in the sundrenched kitchen. There’s a hand on his face, a sure touch guiding him closer and suddenly he’s between Darren’s thighs, as close as he can get with chairs and clothes in the way.  And Chris wants more.  He wants his hands in Darren’s hair and on his skin, he wants tangled sheets and these weeks of building need to finally pour of out him uninhibited.

 

Darren pulls back with a slick sound, and Chris’ hand flexes against Darren’s waist where he’d finally found purchase to hold. His eyes are dark, lips wet with Chris’ own spit, and if Chris wasn’t already hopelessly gone on him, he would be now.

 

“Uhm,” Darren begins, voice gone deep and raspy, but Chris shakes his head.

 

“Don’t say you’re sorry,” Chris says, breathless with it, nerves rising.

 

“I’m not.  Fuck, I’m not.  I just-”

 

“Do you really like me?”  Chris asks, needing the confirmation despite everything in Darren’s kiss telling him the answer already.

 

“Chris,” Darren pants his name and his mouth is so very red.  “Yes, of course. _Yes_.”

 

Chris smiles, relief flooding down to his toes before he pushes in, kissing Darren quiet once more.


	5. Chapter 5

When Chris looks back on that summer, he’ll remember the moment everything changed.  He’ll remember Darren kissing him for the first time in the kitchen of the Inn and what it meant.  He’ll remember the smell of Darren’s skin and the taste of his lips, the heat of his skin under Chris’ nervous palms and the aching sounds that escaped him with every kiss.

 

And he’ll remember how the days after that moment were so unlike the days that came before it.

 

***

 

Three days later Chris is lounging on one of the deck chairs on the balcony of Darren’s room, stretched out languid under the sun while Darren plucks out the notes of a new song on his guitar. He sits perched on the edge of the deck chair, ass pressed tight to Chris’ hip.

 

He’s gorgeous like this, wearing those red swim trunks Chris has grown so fond of, hair a mess of dark curls and skin burnished golden from the summer sun.  A bruise lingers yellow and lilac on his bare thigh, and Chris reaches out to touch the edges of it with careful fingers.

 

It’s still such a rush, to be able to touch Darren whenever he wants.   To know that it’s wanted and allowed, to be able to run his fingers through Darren’s hair at the kitchen table when no one is looking and to kiss him quickly in the hallway when the coast is clear.

 

Chris has spent the last few days in a haze of lips and tongues and hands, sprawled in Darren’s bed, or his own, in a tangle of sheets and limbs.  He supposes this is what someone else might call _taking it slow_ , keeping clothes on even while the heat rises and pulses race. Or at least some of their clothes; Chris’ hands are becoming familiar with the shape of Darren’s shoulders, his back, and channels of his hips and the heavy muscles of his thighs. And his own skin craves the slide of Darren’s fingers and palms every moment they’re not on him.

 

It’s dating, what they’re doing, or something like it. The dinners they’ve had the last few nights, the hours they’ve spent wandering around Santa Monica. Going to the Farmer’s Market early one Saturday, eating their way from stall to stall.  Catching a terrible movie at the Cineplex on an overcast day and holding hands on the armrest.  Roaming along 3rd street where Darren buys Chris a new shirt to replace the one ruined that day at the beach.

 

Chris loves it all, every moment; every time Darren takes his hand, every soft-eyed adoring look he catches Darren giving him, every kiss they share.  He does not worry what happens when the summer ends and the fall begins, when they both end up in New York, together, but in a new circumstance.  They have few weeks left here, lazy at the beach, before thoughts of the next months, the next year, take over.

 

Chris sighs deeply, content, taking a slow breath in and stretching with it.

 

“Do you want to meet my friends?”  He asks suddenly, before he can over think it. It’s something he’s been mulling over, that if he and Darren are going to be a _thing_ , anything, than Darren should at least meet his strange group of friends.

 

“Yes,” Darren answers, without hesitation.

 

Chris opens his eyes.  Darren is twisted around to look down at him, a private smile on his face, as his fingers strike a sweet chord on his guitar.

 

“Okay.”

 

***

 

_I’m bringing someone tonight. Don’t embarrass me._

 

Chris sends the text to the group 15 minutes before he and Darren get down to the beach.  He’s not about to give his friends enough time to plan anything stupid or embarrassing.  He remembers well what happened when Kevin first tried to bring a girl he was serious about to one of their bonfires.  They didn’t hear from her for a week.

 

“Would it be weird if I said I was nervous?” Darren murmurs as they shuffle across the still warm sand towards the blazing bonfire. It isn’t yet sunset, but it’s getting there, and the sky is threading through with shades of pink and gold amidst the blue.

 

“Because they’re my friends?”

 

“Yeah.  Like, these are your people.  You’ve known them for forever.  And now I’m just waltzing in.  Showing up at your sacred bonfire and shit.”

 

Chris smiles kindly and rubs Darren’s shoulder. “Well, you _are_ bringing them beer, so that should help smooth things over.”

 

“If bribery is what it takes…” Darren jokes, hoisting the boxes of beer, but Chris can hear the almost concealed note of worry in his voice.

 

“Darren, they’re just friends.  Just people.  You don’t have to like, impress them.  It’s not like they’re my parents or anything.”

 

Darren stops dead in his tracks, groaning and hanging his head.  “Oh god, we have to tell your _parents_.”

 

Chris chuckles, grabbing Darren’s wrist and tugging him back into motion.  “Stop worrying. We’ll get there when we get there.”  Chris’ stomach tightens at the thought that there’s _somewhere_ for them to get, some future they’re just beginning to inch towards. It’s a heady though, breathtaking and stunning.  “This’ll be a fun night. Just some friends, some food. This is what we do during the summers. I want you to experience it.”

 

Chris is happy to bring Darren into this, into this paramount part of his life.  They only have a few weeks before Darren heads back east, and a couple weeks more before Chris follows him there to start college.  He wants to show Darren as much as he can before everything changes.  He can’t be certain about the future; no one can truly be certain about anything, but he wants to try to keep Darren close, to hold him dear, and to know that he’s done his best at making whatever this is, or might become, work for them both.

 

They aren’t the last to arrive, but there’s already a pretty big crowd gathered when they do.  Mark is the first to spot them, yelling out Chris’ name in a booming voice and waving them over.

 

“Hey, dude.  Who’s your friend?” Mark asks immediately, barreling right to the point and making Chris’ ears flush pink.

 

“Mark, this is Darren,” Chris introduces. “Darren, Mark.”

 

“What’s up, man?”

 

“I brought beer,” Darren blurts out, holding the boxes out again.

 

Mark’s face light’s up and laughs loudly. “Yep, I like you. You can stay.  Come on.”  Mark claps Darren heartily on the back and leads him over to the giant hunk of old, weathered driftwood that serves as a table.

 

“So, Darren.  You and our little Chris here.” Mark’s tone is teasing and his brown eyes fairly twinkle.

 

Chris rolls his eyes, folding his arms across his chest.  “I’m right here, asshole.”

 

“Yeah, me and Chris,” Darren answers, and he flashes Chris a warm, secret smile that Chris feels all the way down to his toes.

 

“How’s that gonna work?” Mark asks as he pops off the caps of a couple of beers and hands them over.  The threat of the police has never stopped them before. “I mean, you’re just vacationing, right?”

 

“Uh, yeah,” Darren nods.  “But I actually live in New York, so…”

 

Mark laughs again.  “Shit.  Trust young Christopher here to find the one dude who happens to live exactly where he’s gonna be moving to.”

 

Darren looks over at Chris again, a private gaze. His eyes are warm in the dying light of the day and he smiles, just for Chris, and Chris feels the heat of it deep in his chest.

 

Chris doesn’t believe in fate, he doesn’t believe in God, and he certainly doesn’t believe in soul mates.  But he does know that sometimes things just come together in unexpected and brilliant ways: the Inn having availability when Darren needed it; Chris’ sister getting that summer abroad program; Darren somehow seeing something he wanted in Chris.  He’s under no pretense that this might not have happened at all and he’s desperately glad that it did, even if it took them a little while to figure it out.

 

“Oh Christ, you two are already disgusting,” Mark groans.  “I can’t watch this.” He shakes his head at them, but he’s grinning fondly as he walks away.

 

“So, that’s Mark,” Chris says, watching his friend disappear into the crowd.

 

“I like him.”

 

“Thought you would.”  Chris turns.  Darren is standing right next to him, beer bottle resting casually against his thigh.  He’s wearing a pink and white stripped shirt and dark grey shorts that show off the thick muscles of his thighs and the scrape that’s still healing.  He looks good – hair ruffled by the breeze and long toes bared to the sand.  The dying sunlight glints in Darren’s eyes and alights along his cheekbone. Chris’ heart does a quick little double-time in his chest and he wants so badly to kiss him.

 

So he does.

 

Darren’s lips are still parted is a soft shape of surprise when Chris pulls back from the quick kiss, but quickly curve into a smile. “I like when you do that,” he says, voice a little husky, and Chris shivers.

 

“Yeah?”

 

Darren kisses him in answer, mouth warm and tasting of beer as the sand shifts under Chris’ feet.

 

Chris is so thoroughly charmed he doesn’t quite know what to do with himself.  Whatever he thought his last summer at the beach was going to be like, it wasn’t this. He thought maybe he’d go on a few dates, or maybe find someone to fuck around with for a couple of weeks before packing his bags and escaping to the east coast.  He didn’t for one moment think someone like Darren would walk into his life.

 

Stepping back, Chris takes Darren’s hand, marveling at the fit of their fingers and the way Darren lets him lead the way. “Come on, let’s go meet the others.”

 

The beach party is bigger than the one Chris went to a few weeks back.  The end of summer is nearing and everyone is trying to make the most of it before the end. So many of them are heading off to college, or back to it, that the bonfire has the feeling of a graduation.

 

Chris will miss his friends, who he still occasionally gets to see throughout the year, since most of them live around Southern California.  But after this summer, these last weeks, that will change.  He’ll be 3000 miles across the country while Rob and Mark and Jenna and everyone else stay here, near the beach where they all grew up. It sends a sharp pang through Chris as he watches Darren talk animatedly with Kevin and Jenna. After this, the time they spend together will come rarely – summer visits and maybe a few hours during a holiday when they can get away from family obligations.  Chris knows he’s going where he wants to be, where he needs to be, but that doesn’t mean he’s not going to miss where he came from. At least a little.

 

Chris shakes himself out of the creeping melancholy and takes a deep breath.  Life marches inexorably forward and he wants to be present for it, not dwelling in the past.  And right then his present is looking bright and beautiful.  A sunlit omen for his future.

 

Darren has wandered off a little, drawn into a conversation with Amber and Dianna, and Chris watches him, happy as the newest part of his world meshes with the old.

 

Darren is good at this, mingling and being charming. Chris can tell that he’s already got half his friends or more wrapped around his finger already. Chris is glad for it; he would not want to give one up for the other.

 

“So, this is the guy, huh?”

 

Chris turns his head. Rob has somehow snuck up on him and is standing at his shoulder, watching Darren too.  “Yeah, this is him.”  It thrills Chris to say it, to know that it means something it didn’t before.

 

“He’s shorter than I expected,” muses Rob as he appraises Darren from afar.

 

Chris snorts.  “Beggars can’t be choosers.”

 

Rob rolls his eyes.  “Don’t do that.  But there is…something about him, I suppose.”  His gaze turns sly, knowing, and Chris blushes.

 

That Darren and Rob share a few similar traits has not gone unnoticed by Chris.

 

“Oh shut up.”  He can be forgiven if he’s developed a thing for dark hair, bright eyes, and a smart mouth.

 

“You guys finally figured this out?”

 

Chris shrugs, folding his arms across his chest. “I don’t know if I would say exactly that.”  It’s one thing to tell himself they’re dating; it’s another to say he knows what that means. Hearts are complicated things; he hardly knows his own to know another’s.

 

“And what would you say?” Rob prompts.

 

“That we’re working on it?  It hasn’t exactly been that long.”  And maybe that’s part of the problem lingering around them. Chris knows his heart, and he knows he wants to fall headlong into this, opening and willing. But a few weeks of knowing someone isn’t anything, but maybe it’s enough.  Maybe it’s enough to begin.

 

“But you like him.”

 

“Yeah, I do.”

 

“And you’re moving to New York with him.”

 

Chris groans and smacks Rob across the stomach with the back of his hand.  “I am not moving _with_ him.”

 

“But you’re going to keep seeing him though. After this summer.”

 

Chris presses his lips together and watches Darren tell some story with his expressive hands and beautiful face.  The group around him is laughing and Darren looks completely at ease in Chris’ little circle of friends.  “I hope so.”

 

“I want to meet him,” Rob states.

 

“Well, that is why he’s here.  To meet you guys.”

 

Chris can’t deny that Rob’s opinion of Darren matters to him.  Even if things weren’t going to work out between them beyond friendship, Rob still means the world to him.

 

Together they walk over to where Darren is holding court to a half-circle of friends.  Chris slides up next to Darren just in time to hear him finishing a story.

 

“…and it was a shark.  A _huge_ one. 15 feet _at least_.  Came right the fuck at me.  But I stopped him, and I said ‘shark, murder is _not_ the answer.’ And you know what?  We’re buds now.”

 

“By shark,” Chris interjects. “He means he didn’t listen to me and got pushed into one of those rocks by the caves.”

 

The group around them laughs knowingly, but Chris can tell they’re thoroughly charmed by Darren.

 

“Way to diminish my heart-pounding tale of heroism and bravery,” Darren teases as he leans into Chris, taking his hand and twining their fingers back together.

 

“Deepest apologies.”  Chris drops a quick kiss to the top of Darren’s bare shoulder and Darren squeezes his hand.  It’s easy to be physical with Darren, even in front of others, easier than it’s ever been with anyone.  It would scare Chris if he stopped to think about it.  “I want you to meet someone.”

 

“Another someone?”

 

“Yeah.” Chris leans back and tips his head toward Rob, motioning him to come closer.  “This is my friend Rob.”

 

Darren reaches out to shake Rob’s hand, grinning with his teeth.  “Hey man, I’m Darren.”

 

Rob’s smile is bright and not the least bit competitive.  “Nice to meet you.”

 

“You’re another of Chris’ friends, yeah?”

 

“We go back,” Rob says, just cryptically enough that Darren glances quickly between Rob and Chris, confusion knitting his brow. Chris shakes his head slightly, shrugging it off, and a tension Chris hadn’t even noticed relaxes from Darren’s shoulders.

 

Chris’ stomach flutters at the thought of Darren even being remotely jealous of Rob.

 

“Uhm, so Darren works on Broadway,” Chris leads, so they don’t end up staring at each other awkwardly for any longer.

 

“Oh yeah?” Rob turns more towards Darren. “Doing what?”

 

“Music, mostly.  I’m a musician.  And lyrics.”

 

Rob nods, interest bright on his face, and Chris knows they’re going to get along just fine.  He listens as they chat, happy to stand there with Darren warm at his side and their fingers still tangled together between them. Chris lets the world wash over him: the crash of the waves against the shore, the crackle and hiss of the great bonfire, the low hum of dozens of voices rising and falling. It’s a good night, Chris thinks, and feels contentment in his bones.

 

“I’m gonna get us another drink,” Chris says, untangling himself from Darren.  “You guys keep talking.”  Darren offers him a gentle smile that Chris returns before taking his empty beer bottle away from him.

 

Chris shuffles over to the driftwood table to dig a few more beers out of a cooler.  The scent of the grill mingles with the burning wood of the fire and Chris breathes in deeply, feeling as at home here as he does at the Inn. Mark is at the grill and he waves the tongs at Chris, who shakes his head.  He’s hungry, but he’ll wait to see what Darren wants; he’s not worried about running out of food.  Once, a few years back, they ran out of chips and burgers and there was almost a riot on the beach.  That never happened again.  

 

Chris is scouring the table for a bottle opener when he feels someone tap his elbow and he turns.

 

Lingering just behind him is a guy who’s vaguely familiar.  He’s tall, with blonde patchy scruff and a backwards Snapback.  It takes Chris a second, but he thinks maybe he’s the guy from the cookout earlier in the summer.  He can’t be sure though.  So often there are people at these gatherings Chris doesn’t remember 5 minutes after meeting them.  Friends bring friends, and friends of friends.  Occasionally siblings and cousins show up.  It’s a mess of people; it’s part of the charm.

 

“Looking for this?” The guy asks and he holds up the bottle opener Chris was looking for.

 

“Yeah, thanks.”

 

“Here, let me.”

 

Before Chris can protest, the guy takes one of the beers from him and pops it open.  The metal cap clatters to the driftwood table, bouncing and rolling over the edge down to the sand.  Annoyance flares in the pit of Chris’ stomach, but he swallows it down, and takes his beer back.  Over the years he’s gotten used to there being one or two assholes who show up during the summer. Usually they come with a rich family and a giant bag of entitlement dragging behind them.  Luckily, inevitably, they don’t return.

 

The guy is still talking, and if he says his name, Chris doesn’t catch it.  How this guy got an invite to the party Chris neither knows nor cares.

 

“So you live around here, right?” Snapback asks. He’s angled his body closer to Chris, who can’t step any farther away without knocking the table over. “I saw you at one of these things a few weeks ago.”

 

Chris nods, but feels his annoyance rising. So this is the same guy. He’s tempted to roll his eyes, but his parents raised him too well to be rude.  Still, all wants to do is walk away and get back to Darren and his friends.  “Uh, yeah.”

 

“Awesome.  I’m just in town for a while.  My parents are renting a place over on Ocean.  Thought I’d crash with them a bit.  Relax.  Have a little fun.  You know, live the good life.”

 

“Right.  Of course,” Chris placidly agrees.

 

What Snapback really means is that his parents have all the money and that he’s too old to admit he still lives with them.

 

Chris doesn’t know this guy, and he doesn’t care to either.  Snapback’s tank top is expensively cheap and he looks like someone who’s in his sixth year at UCLA, but still hanging around the freshman dorms.  The narrow look in Snapback’s eyes and the way he keeps leaning into Chris’ space makes the hair on the back of Chris’ neck stand and his nerves prickle.  He hates this; he wants to be anywhere else.  He wants to be surrounded by his friends.  He wants to be back against Darren’s side, where the world is making more and more sense every day.

 

“Do you want to get something to eat?” Snapback asks, seemingly unknowing, or uncaring, of Chris’ discomfort. “Maybe even get out of here? I know some pretty cool places around here, quiet, private, and I’d like-”

 

“Hey!  I didn’t know if you want a hotdog or a burger, so I got you both.”

 

Relief floods through Chris’s body at the sound of Darren’s voice, cool and flowing like the ocean in the early morning hours. Chris looks over to see Darren standing just to the side, holding two plates and a perfectly calm expression, and he hopes the gratitude is clear on his face despite the words he doesn’t say. The nearly imperceptible nod of Darren’s head tells him it is.

 

When Chris turns back, Snapback’s face is a perfect picture of restrained frustration.  Chris could crow in triumph.

 

“Oh perfect,” Chris chirps, too bright. “I’m _starving_.”  He slips over to stand with Darren, shoulder to shoulder, making his choice clear, as much as it was a choice at all.

 

This close, Chris can see just how tense Darren is; a muscle flickers in his jaw beneath his beard and his shoulders are pulled back taught, pulling him as tall as possible.  His eyes are dark, narrowed ever so, and it’s the closest to angry Chris has ever seen him.  Chris is embarrassed to think that it’s not a bad look on Darren.

 

And now, across from them, he can see the frustration plain across Snapback’s weak features.

 

“You were saying you were going to get something to eat?” Chris asks, with a tilt to his head.  “I’m sure there’s still plenty left over there.”

 

Snapback clenches his jaw, but says nothing, only turns and shuffles away, perhaps to find another target, perhaps to leave the party all together.  Chris doesn’t particularly care.

 

“My hero,” Chris teasingly fawns, when Snapback is gone and he’s finally alone with Darren.

 

“Nah, I was just hungry,” Darren shrugs, but it’s too casual, too practiced.  “Friend of yours?”

 

Chris shakes his head.  “Not even a little bit.”

 

Darren looks like he wants to say something, but instead he breathes out slow, and Chris knows a hot rush of jealousy when he sees it.

 

Chris’ experience with these things is limited and he knows it, but he knows that he doesn’t owe Darren anything.  He’s not responsible for some random creep hitting on him at a barbeque, and he’s not responsible for how it makes Darren feel to see. He doesn’t have to prove anything to Darren; his feelings are what they are for the man.  They’re new and growing, and every day he feels something else, something more.  It’s not solely his responsibility to make sure Darren knows that he cares for him; Darren has to believe it for himself as well.

 

But even so, knowing all that, he still wants to reassure Darren that as far as he’s concerned, there’s no one else worth looking at.

 

“You don’t have anything to worry about,” Chris says, pulling the words from somewhere deep in his chest, where they don’t feel quite right, but they’re all he’s got.

 

Darren’s face is still and shadowed, and the pause before he speaks makes Chris’ palms sweat.  “You don’t either.”

 

Chris feels broken open to the world until there are fingers against his jaw that pull him back together.  He doesn’t know what Darren’s done with the plates he’d been holding, but he doesn’t care at all because Darren is holding his face and kissing him slow, lips tasting of new, if unspoken promises. Chris closes his eyes and sighs, letting himself fall and fall again, while the sand beneath his feet holds him up.

 

They’ve missed the sunset, but the firelight flickers in Darren’s eyes when he pulls back and Chris tries to memorize every touch of color there.  The party carries on around them, and they eventually rejoin Chris’ friends, but Chris lets it all wash over him.  He stands next to Darren, their fingers intertwined, and soaks in the gentle crashing of the waves, the choir of a dozen conversations, and the crackle of the fire. He knows his life is about to change as he heads off to the school, but he’s pretty sure that if he’s going to have Darren to share it with, then whatever change is in store for him will be for good.

 

***

 

It’s past late when they get back to the Inn. The front door swings open on silent hinges and they creep up the stairs like errant teenagers, cringing at every groan and squeak of the wooden planks.  Chris can hear Darren giggling behind him as they reach the top and he squeezes Darren’s hand; their fingers have been laced together since the last hours on the beach.

 

They kiss outside of Chris’ bedroom door, slow and quiet, Chris acutely aware of his parents asleep just a few rooms down. He feels like the slick slide of their lips is so loud through the dark hallway, sticky-wet noises echoing in the night.  Darren’s hands are hot on his hips, fingers just barely creeping under the edge of his tank top to graze his skin, and the door is hard against his back.  His hips roll as Darren kisses him deep, and the press of his cock against Darren’s hip has him biting back a groan.

 

The desire to invite Darren inside rests heavy on the back on his tongue.  But it doesn’t quite feel right: illicit in the dark hours of the night like they might get caught at any moment.  That’s not what he wants, not when it should be so much more.  He will not deny that he’s come to thoughts of Darren since that first time, he has, and tonight he will again.  Biting his lip as he strokes himself quickly so Darren won’t hear what he’s doing one room over.  But standing there in the hallway, with Darren a hard presence against his own thigh and breath panting hot against his mouth, Chris is pretty sure Darren will be doing the same.

 

Chris forces himself to break away from the kiss, putting a breath of distance between them, even though the space aches in his very soul.  “Uhm, thanks for coming with me tonight,” he whispers.  “And thanks, you know, for the other thing.”

 

Darren squeezes his hips and rests his forehead against Chris’ shoulder.  “You’re welcome.  It was fun. I have fun being with you. No matter what we’re doing. No matter who else is around.”

 

“Me too,” Chris replies, a little inanely, but it’s the truth.  He’s happy when he’s with Darren, happier than he’s been before, heart full and open to the world. Ready for more.

 

But he must pull himself away for the night, despite the want filling his body.

 

“So, uhm, good night.”

 

Darren huffs a laugh against his shoulder. “A thousand times goodnight,” he mumbles, making Chris grin.

 

He untangles himself from Darren’s hands before he lets himself get lost in his kisses once more.  His bedroom is cool and the door closes behind him with a soft snick.  Chris will sleep in his bed tonight and Darren will stay in his own, and Chris will ache for him the whole night through.


	6. Chapter 6

Chris gets up early and spends a few hours quietly cleaning up the kitchen, taking out the garbage, and sweeping out the front hallways of the sand that so quickly collects.  Being so focused on Darren, he’s neglected some of his usual chores around the Inn, and even though his parents haven’t said anything about it, he wakes up that morning before the sun with just a touch of guilt.

 

He wonders if they know, his parents, about him and Darren.  It’s not like he’s been particularly subtle about the way he feels, or at least he doesn’t think he’s been, and he’s pretty sure he’s caught his mom looking between him and Darren with more than a hint of knowledge behind her eyes.

 

He never came out to his parents.  He never had to.  They seemed to just always know.  When he was thirteen, Chris told his sister than he liked her best friend’s brother, Marco, and she patted him on the shoulder and told him that Marco was an asshole and that he could do better.  At some point Chris is going to have to tell his parents that he’s dating the guy paying to stay at their Inn.  But that morning is coming up sweet and clear and he’ll do it another time.

 

Chris is washing his hands in the kitchen when Darren peeks his head in.  His hair is wet, as though from a shower, curls plastered to his forehead, and Chris’ heart gives a little squeeze at the sight of him.

 

“Hey.”

 

“Morning.”

 

Darren is wearing white shorts that end too many inches above his knees and a black tank top that Chris almost thinks he stole from his own dresser.

 

“Do you wanna go for a drive?” Darren asks, a glint in his eyes.

 

“Yeah,” Chris answers, without hesitation.

 

A smile blooms across Darren’s face. “Pack an overnight bag and meet me on the porch.”

 

“An overnight--?” Chris starts to ask, but Darren is gone with a flash of a toothy grin.

 

Chris has never been the most spontaneous of people; his friends are the ones more likely to drive out to Las Vegas on a whim, or quit their shitty summer jobs to spend 2 months backpacking through Europe. But Darren is a different sort of man; energy seems to crackle just under his skin at all times, begging to be released. Darren will travel across the country to stay at a beachside inn for six weeks just to get away from his life for a little while.  The least Chris can do is throw some underwear and a toothbrush into a backpack and get into a car with him.

 

He’s in the kitchen grabbing some bottles of water out of the fridge when his mom shuffles in, still in her dressing gown with a bare face and her hair pulled back messily.

 

“You boys are up early,” Mrs. Colfer says, stepping around Chris to turn on the coffee pot.  The newest guests at the Inn, a pair of women celebrating their 10-year anniversary, are breakfast fiends, and Chris knows that his parents have been enjoying feeding them copious amounts of bacon and eggs.

 

“Yeah, uh.  We’re actually going to be going for a little drive.”

 

Mrs. Colfer arches an eyebrow at him. “A drive?  Where?”

 

Chris shrugs.  “I uh, I don’t really know.  Darren invited me this morning.” Chris’ backpack feels like incriminating evidence on the kitchen table.

 

“You boys are spending a lot of time together,” Mrs. Colfer says smoothly and Chris can feel his cheeks heating up at the completely obvious insinuation.  His mother isn’t stupid and she isn’t blind.

 

“Yeah, we, that is…” The back of Chris’ neck is hot and he can feel nervous sweat gathering in the small of his back. “It’s just that…”

 

Mrs. Colfer turns and leans back against the counter. “Chris,” she begins, her voice patient.  “Darren is lovely man.”  She says it so simply that Chris has to exhale.

 

“Mom…”

 

She holds a hand up.  “Look, I know this isn’t something we’ve really talked about. And a lot of that is because your father and I didn’t quite know what to say to you.  But you had your friends and you seemed happy. You were always so…ahead of yourself.  So ahead of us. And now you’re going off to college soon, and I know this Darren is going to be in the city there too. And…” She takes a breath and lets it out quickly.  “We just want you to be careful, okay?  I want you to be happy, but I also want you to be thinking clearly about this.”

 

Embarrassment battles with adoration for his mother. “I totally get that. I do.  And I am thinking clearly, maybe more than ever.” He doesn’t know what else he can say to this.  He doesn’t talk about guys with his mom, and he doesn’t talk about sex.  But here they are, in this bright, sunlit kitchen. “We’re just…going for a drive.”

 

“With a change of clothes?”

 

Chris flushes all the way down to his kneecaps. “Mom…”

 

She shakes her head, but she’s smiling. “You’re getting to be a grown man and I trust you to make smart decisions.”  She steps towards him, cups his face, and kisses his forehead.

 

“I like him,” he mumbles, and then stands up straighter, thinking suddenly of Darren’s bright eyes and strong hands. “I like him.”

 

“Then go have fun,” Mrs. Colfer says and it sounds like a benediction.  “Drive safe and call if something happens.”

 

“I will.  I promise.” Chris grabs the bottles of water and his backpack and heads for the doorway, but he pauses, and turns back.  “I love you, mom.”

 

“Love you too.”

 

Darren is sitting on the porch when Chris finally steps out of the house.  He’s got a bright yellow backpack next to him, a red cooler at his feet, and he looks up with a smile when Chris closes the front door.

 

“Hey, you ready to get this show on the road?”

 

Chris nods.  He is, for this and so much more.

 

***

 

Darren’s car is a blue BMW coated in road dust with the kind of seat belt that automatically straps across Chris’ chest when the passenger door closes.

 

“It’s actually my dad’s old car,” Darren says as he pulls out of the Windward Inn’s long driveway towards the street. “Or was, I guess. I never really felt the need to get a newer one.  This one is perfectly fine, you know?  Just because maybe I could buy a new car doesn’t mean I should.  That’s just wasteful.  And I live in New York now.  Not a whole lot of driving happening there, sadly.”

 

Traffic is slow going out of town as they merge off the Santa Monica freeway and onto the Pacific Coast Highway, but Chris just rolls the window down and relaxes back.  The old seats are comfortable, well worn and molding to his body, and the scent of Darren’s soap lingers in the air.

 

“Any music requests?”

 

Chris glances over.  Darren has his iPod plugged into the car’s stereo. “Whatever you want. You’re the musician here.”

 

Darren snorts, but selects something with a few swipes of his thumb.  “Be warned. I have very eclectic tastes.”

 

“Are you going to play reggae?”

 

“No.”

 

“Opera?”

 

Darren shakes his head.  “Nope.”

 

“Then we’re good.”

 

“Oh the faith you have in me,” Darren murmurs, and Chris does not challenge him.

 

“So where are we going?”  Chris asks, watching another milepost disappear in a blur.  For all the time he’s spent in Santa Monica, he hasn’t done much exploring north up the coast. Instead, he and Rob and the others tended to head down to Long Beach and beyond whenever they felt the need to escape the town.

 

“Nowhere special,” Darren responds. “Just up.  My mom always told me that it’s the journey that matters, not the destination.”

 

Chris nods and thinks about the journey he’s ready to take with this man.

 

Darren drives with one hand easy on the steering wheel and the other resting on the gearshift, like he learned to drive stick and can’t quite shake the muscle memory.

 

“Did you do this often?  When you lived around here?”

 

“What?  Go for a drive?  Yeah, my brother and I would throw some food in a cooler, bring a change of skivvies, pick a direction, and just drive.  Sometimes overnight, sometimes longer.”

 

“Didn’t your parents worry?”

 

“Sure, I guess.  But they weren’t going to coddle us.  If we broke down or ran out of gas that was our problem.  We were lucky though.  The worst that happened was this one time in Oregon…” Darren trails off as he starts to laugh at the memory.  “Oh man, I can’t even – it won’t make any sense but like, me and my brother.  Naked.  In the back of a highway patrol car.”  Darren shakes his head and his smile stretches ear to ear.  “I’ll tell you the whole story some time.”

 

Chris thinks Daren must have a lifetime of stories, and he wants to hear every one.  “It sounds like fun,” he says.

 

“It was.  It is.  There’s a whole big world out there, you know?  You have to see more than your corner of it.”

 

An hour out of town the traffic thins and the road winds out long ahead of them.  The ocean stretches on, endless towards the west and the bright salt breeze passes through the car, ruffling Chris’ hair and cooling his skin.

 

Through the speakers, a woman begins to sing – an aching, seductive song.  Next to Chris, Darren sings along in a quiet, higher harmony that has Chris shivering.

 

He’s heard Darren sing before, but only a little and from a distance, only when the melodies he plucked out on his guitar carried through the open doors of Chris’ bedroom balcony.  But he likes it.  The tone is soothing, if a bit rough with the casual ease, and Darren’s voice is comfortable, comforting.

 

Chris finds himself smiling and he can’t stop it; doesn’t want to.  He’s going to take these days, these moments, with him wherever he goes, and he just hopes that Darren will be waiting for him when he gets there.

 

“What so funny?”  Darren asks, glancing over at him.

 

“Nothing.  Just…picturing you in a little red dress.”

 

Darren snorts.  “I’ll have you know I look fabulous in a dress.”

 

“Yes, I bet you do.”

 

“You should see my heels.”

 

Chris quirks an eyebrow.  “Oh yeah?”

 

“They’re gold.  You’ll love them.”

 

Chris laughs and feels it all the way down into his bones.

 

They drive on.  This highway follows the edge of coast all the way up and Chris wonders how far they’ll go.  He thinks he wouldn’t mind not stopping at all.  To ride on through the night and beyond, into Oregon and Washington, through the redwoods and the mountains, getting to Seattle and finally Canada.  They’re young and the world is theirs for the taking.

 

 _Live not to regret_ , Chris thinks and he feels electric with it.  He’s not scared anymore.

 

They sing along to Darren’s playlist; Darren first, and then Chris when he’s finally cajoled enough to loosen up.  There is no one else around to hear him, and even then his voice would be lost to the wind whipping past as they barrel down the highway at 60 miles per hour or more.

 

“I like your voice,” Darren comments, after a rousing rendition of some 80s hair-band ballad that Chris somehow knew the lyrics to, if not the name.

 

Chris blushes at the praise.  “We sound good together,” he hedges, looking at Darren across the car.

 

He’s grinning so widely that the apples of his cheeks almost touch the frames of his sunglasses.  “Yeah we do.”

 

There’s a different life out there, somewhere, one where Chris performs instead of writes, where he finds the stage more comfortable than a desk and a camera easy to stand in front of.  But he’s too young to worry about _what ifs_ when he hasn’t even found a handful of things he might say _maybe_ to.  He’s saying yes to Darren and New York, that’s enough for now.

 

They stop for lunch at a roadside crab shack Darren swears is world famous, and given the line stretching out of the door and down the path, Chris believes him.

 

Chris would have missed the place altogether if Darren’s hadn’t suddenly pulled off the highway and parked the car on the side of the road.  There are other cars parked similarly and haphazardly, and Chris figures it’s accepted if not completely illegal.

 

“This place is _amazing_ ,” Darren gushes as they make their way to the end of the line. “I know you’re going to love it.” There are families and old couples and everyone in between waiting and Chris can smell the cooking already.

 

The little restaurant’s wooden siding is painted white and the window frames are a faded blue, weathered and cracked from salt and sun.  When they finally make it inside the cramped shack, the menu is handwritten on chalkboards behind the old, warped oak counter, proclaiming the fresh catch of the day, crab legs, clam chowder, and more.

 

Darren orders fish and chips and Chris gets the same, buoyed by Darren’s insistence that the batter is the best he’s ever had.

 

“Do you like crab cakes?”  Darren asks as the cashier rings up their order.

 

“Oh yeah,” Chris nods enthusiastically.

 

“Two crab cakes and two sodas,” Darren adds to the order.  Chris catches him reaching into his pocket for his wallet and rushes to get his own. “Don’t you dare,” Darren chides, handing a couple of bills over to the cashier before Chris can protest. “You can buy dinner. Or breakfast.”

 

His tone is perfectly casual – the comment almost off hand – but Chris suddenly remembers that he’d packed an overnight bag before getting into the car that morning.  It hadn’t meant much to him at the time, just that they wouldn’t be returning to the Inn, but it hits him now, a solid punch to his gut. He’s going to be sharing a room with Darren – alone, out of the Inn, away from his family.  For the whole night.

 

He’s been thinking about it, about Darren and sex and the world between their bodies, of course he has.  He thinks about it when Darren kisses him slow and deep, or quick and light, a brush of lips to say hello or something more. He thinks about it when he crawls into bed at night, alone with the memory of Darren’s lips on his mouth and his hands on Chris’ hips, anywhere Darren has touched him, which isn’t anywhere enough. He thinks about it when he’s doing the dishes in the kitchen, hands going still in sudsy water as his brain fills with thoughts of Darren’s naked thighs and arms and heaving chest. How the shades of their skin will look pressed tight together and how sharp Darren’s sweat will taste on his tongue.

 

Darren must see the look on his face and the flush in his cheeks because he tilts his head curiously and Chris blushes even more. He’s not ashamed of wanting Darren, and he’s not embarrassed if Darren knows it, but there’s something about getting caught in the fog of his lust that has him discomfited. The surge of want leaves him feeling off balance, heart beating heavy against his ribs as his body aches for something he can’t yet have.

 

Darren doesn’t say anything, but his pupils are wide and when he reaches out to touch Chris’ wrist, his fingers are hot. Chris turns his hand until their fingers can lace together and wonders if Darren can feel the beating of his heart through his palm.  They’re on the same page about that, Chris is sure.

 

Their orders come nestled in paper baskets lined with newspaper.  Darren’s eyes are huge with anticipation as he grabs the baskets off the counter while Chris picks up their drinks and the crab cakes.  There’s no seating inside, and even though there are some plastic tables and chairs and picnic benches scattered outside the crab shack, they’re all occupied with happily eating patrons.

 

“Come on,” Darren tips his head back towards the highway.  Chris isn’t sure where they’re going until Darren nimbly sits up on the hood of his car, feet resting on the front bumper.  “Come on,” he repeats, tapping a spot next to him and grinning.  “It’ll hold.”

 

The metal creaks and groans but holds as Chris gingerly sits down, careful not to drop his lunch all over the place. He still feels unsteady, still feels arousal burning just under his skin, but he doesn’t want it to go away, doesn’t want it to calm.  Darren can be hard to read sometimes, an open heart shrouded in caution, but Chris can see the flush in his cheeks under his dark beard and thinks that Darren is feeling it too.

 

Anticipation for the sanctuary of a private motel room grows stronger, more urgent, but Chris tamps it down.  They have hours to go until nightfall, and miles of open road ahead of them.  And besides, there’s food to enjoy and the simple pleasure of sitting next to Darren under the warm sun, so close their thighs touch.  Just beyond the road and the stretch of beach, the ocean crashes against the shore, endless and unstoppable.

 

The batter is perfectly crisp and golden and the fish underneath flaky and moist.  Grease stains the newspaper and Chris’ fingers as he pulls piece after piece apart and eats faster than he probably should.  But he’s suddenly ravenous.

 

“Of course it’s not as good as your dad’s cooking,” Darren says around a mouthful of flaky, creamy crab cake.  “But it’s still fucking delicious.”

 

“He’ll be happy to hear that,” Chris responds, thinking of that first meal the night Darren checked into the Inn. It feels like it’s been so much longer than a month.

 

“I like your parents.”

 

“They like you,” Chris answers before he thinks to stop himself, before he considers that it might be too much to say too soon.

 

Darren’s expression is still for a moment, eyes hidden once more behind his sunglasses.  “I want them to like me,” he says quietly.  His throat moves subtly as he swallows and Chris has to look away.

 

He hasn’t thought much beyond what happens when he moves to New York.  He’ll unpack, he’ll start classes, and he’ll keep going.  That much he knew at the beginning of the summer. But now, with the summer drawing to an end, there is Darren, and there is _them_. And he wants to move forward without regret and continue this new life without stopping.

 

“Do you think your parents will like me?” Chris asks.

 

Tension slips from Darren’s shoulders on an exhale. “Yeah, they will. My brother too. They’ll like you. My mom will sure try to fatten you up on the holidays.”  Darren pats his own stomach.  “It’s her specialty. My dad’s a great cook too, but mom is the one who overfills the plates.  It’s like it’s her mission to prove to the world that we’re all eating well.”

 

“Your parents live in San Francisco still?”

 

“Mostly.  They visit New York a lot, for me and my brother.  We’re definitely one of _those_ families.  You’ll meet them soon enough.”  A grin curves Darren’s lips.  “They’re gonna love you.” His confidence fills Chris’ heart.

 

They finish off their lunch in companionable silence, shoulders bumping and bare knees touching.  The chips are golden brown, fluffy on the inside and crispy on the outside, and Chris eats more than he probably should.

 

The hood of the car is warm under Chris’ ass and thighs, and it still feels completely dangerous to be sitting so close to the road as other cars speed past.  But from here the ocean is an endless palette of white-capped blue stretched all the way to the unreachable horizon.  For a moment anything feels possible, if Chris just reaches out for it.

 

“Beautiful,” Darren murmurs and Chris nods in agreement, but when he glances over, Darren is looking and him and not the sea.

 

“Sap,” he chides.

 

Darren shrugs, unashamed.  “Just telling it like I see it.”

 

Chris briefly tips his cheek against Darren’s shoulder, reveling in the touch of sun-warmed skin against his own. Darren smells of the last traces of sunscreen and sweat, and Chris finds himself wanting to commit it to memory for the long weeks when he’s still in California and Darren is already thousands of miles east.

 

“What will you do when you go home?” He asks.

 

“Wait for you.”

 

Chris flushes and his stomach contracts sharply. “Not what I meant.” He poked Darren in the thigh.

 

“I know, still true though.  But I don’t really know, I guess.  I’ll get back to work.  Like I said, a lot of this was to clear my head. To be able to get back to a place where I can make music.  Get some clarity, some inspiration.”

 

“And have you?”

 

“You’ve heard me playing in my room.”

 

“I have,” Chris nods, remembering all the times he’s lain in his own bed, listening to the faint strumming of Darren’s guitar through the walls and carried in on the breeze.

 

“Pretty sure I’ve found some inspiration.”

 

Coming from anyone else, the words would be trite and Chris would surely groan.  But spilling from Darren’s lips it sounds like the truth.  Unknowing what to say, Chris leans over and kisses Darren softly.  The angle is off and their hands are greasy from lunch, and even though they taste of beer batter and fish it may be one of Chris’ favorite kisses.

 

***

 

The sun is setting over the edge of the horizon, casting the sky in pinks and purples, when Darren takes the next exit off the highway. Chris doesn’t ask if he knows where he’s going; he trusts Darren.  They’ve driven for hours and for hundreds of miles, and Chris has trusted him every moment along the way.

 

There’s a little town just off the exit – not even a town, really, just a jumble of necessary businesses for the travelers who pass through hour after hour.  A motel appears a few streets down, next to one of three gas stations in the immediate vicinity and a diner that looks like it’s seen better days.

 

Darren pulls into the half-full parking lot of the motel and into an open spot.  Chris groans as he gets out of the car, stretching his legs.  The brightly lit sign over the motel proclaims vacancy, but Chris can’t imagine this place ever full.

 

“Been here before?” He asks as Darren grabs their bags from the back seat.

 

“Once, with my brother and some friends. I remember it being bigger.” He winks at Chris and locks the car up for the night.

 

The lobby is small and smells of old coffee and window cleaner.  The attendant sitting at the front desk wears a baseball cap and looks at them for a beat too long when Darren requests a room.

 

“One bed, two beds.  Doesn’t matter,” Darren says, waving his hand.  “Whatever you got that’s available. Non-smoking, though.”

 

Darren has a credit card out and across the counter before Chris can even think about trying to pay for the room.

 

“Breakfast, remember?”  A different tone pitches Darren’s voice, deeper, rougher, and Chris shivers in the overly air-conditioned lobby.  Anticipation is rising, even if he’s not completely sure of where it might go.

 

Their room is on the second floor and the old hallway creeks a little under their feet.  Decades of cigarette smoke lingers in the yellowed paint on the walls, even though the carpet is newer.

 

“206, this is us.” Darren slips the keycard into the lock.

 

It’s a small room, with one queen bed instead of two doubles, and Chris drops his backpack on the chair by the door. Wooden dresser, table, paisley armchair – it seems fitting that the big bed is the focus of the room, even with its garish comforter and mass of pillows.

 

“Do you want to shower?” Darren asks, flipping on a lamp and looking around the room.  “Or see what’s on pay-per-view?  Or--”

 

But Chris is already reaching out and pulling Darren close to him, kissing him like he’s been dying for it.  And maybe he has been.  Darren’s mouth opens eagerly under his, this kiss deep and wet and aching, full of longing and lust.

 

Chris doesn’t want to waste time and he doesn’t want to talk.  They talked enough today, on this long, aimless drive.  And they’ve talked enough over the weeks since Darren showed up in his dusty blue car and his pink shorts in front of Chris’ inn.  There’s a clock ticking down the hours they have left together and he’s not going to let it beat louder than his heart.

 

Darren’s bag hits the floor with a soft thump before two hands thread through Chris’ messy hair, fingers finding the shape of his skull and holding him steady.  Chris cannot say _don’t go_ , but he can make Darren understand that he wishes he could stay.

 

Chris gets his hands on the hem of Darren’s tank top, trying to get it up over his head, but his fingers are clumsy in his urgency and their arms are in the way.

 

“Come on, off,” Chris insists, pulling away from a biting kiss to put enough space between them.

 

“Fuck yes,” Darren pants, helpfully lifting his arms so Chris can finally pull his tank off and toss it aside.

 

Chris has seen him shirtless before, but there’s something about the intimacy of this private room, and the meaning of the bed behind him that casts the moment in a different light.  Darren’s skin is shades darker than it was a month ago, burnished by the sun.  His chest hair is coarse under Chris’ palm as he presses his hand to the center of Darren’s chest, feeling his warm skin and the rapid beating of his heart behind his bones.

 

When Chris pulls his gaze up from Darren’s small, pebbled nipples and the shadows of his abs, Darren’s expression is breathtaking. His eyes have gone so dark and his hair is a mess of unkempt curls, mussed by the wind and sea salt air. Beneath his beard, his cheeks are flushed and his lips are swollen from Chris’ kisses.  He is beautiful.  Open, willing, and present.

 

Chris leans in and finds his mouth again, anchoring himself with a kiss.  He loses his shirt to Darren’s impatient fingers and doesn’t have time to worry about being self-conscious before Darren’s broad hands are all over him.  Sweeping down his naked back, grasping at his hips, smoothing over his ass.  Everywhere he touches has Chris’ skin aching for more, and Chris wants the rest of their clothes gone too.

 

He knows there’s something to be said for going slow, for savoring the moments and the steps between, but his patience was lost days ago.  There will be time for the rest, for long nights tangled in damp sheets with slow hands and open mouths. There will be time for holding back, for making it last, for hours with fingers and hips and learning everything there is to know about Darren’s body and what they can do together.  But tonight, in these precious hours, Chris just wants as much as he can take.

 

Chris doesn’t remember them moving, but suddenly Darren is sitting down on the edge of the bed and Chris is standing between his spread thighs, looking down his own naked chest at him.  Chris can see the heavy shape of Darren’s cock pressed against his fly and he swallows reflexively.

 

Darren’s pupils are blown wide as he gazes up at Chris, hands resting heavy on Chris’ hips, just at the waistband of his shorts. Chris shivers as Darren’s thumb rub small circles against his pale skin, every movement echoed in the throbbing of his heavy cock.

 

“This okay?” Darren asks.  His mouth is damp where he’s licked his lips.

 

“Yeah.”

 

Darren leans in and Chris gasps softly as Darren places kiss after kiss across his belly, tongue moving wetly against the hair under his belly button.  Chris shudders and his cock jumps when Darren takes a soft pinch of skin between his teeth and nips gently.

 

“Ah, you dick,” Chris groans, reaching down to squeeze Darren’s shoulders.  Darren just laughs, hot puffs of damp air against Chris’ stomach.

 

Chris’ belly tightens when Darren’s hands move from his hips to the fly of his shorts, getting the button open and the zipper down with practiced ease.  Chris feels like he’s been half-hard all day, body filled with anticipation since he got into the car this morning, but now his cock is heavy and aching, leaking against the soft cotton his underwear.  He’s sure Darren can smell it.

 

Chris inhales deeply when Darren tugs his shorts and underwear down over his hips and ass, exposing him in one motion. Chris steps out of the last of his clothes, kicking them away, and fights the urge to cover himself with his hands.  But Darren’s mouth is open in soft reverence and he reaches out slowly, giving Chris time to pull away, before his fingers find the base of Chris’ cock.

 

He explores at his leisure, fingers scratching through the coarse hair before moving along the shaft.  Chris’ heart pounds in his chest, breath coming faster and faster as Darren finally strokes him, fingertips catching in the clear slick at the head of Chris’ cock and smearing it across the thin skin. It feels good, it feels right; Darren’s hand confident around him as Chris’ blood throbs in his veins.

 

A sharp, sucking kiss in the crease of his hip has Chris rasping and thrusting into Darren’s touch.

 

“Is this okay?”  Darren asks again and Chris forces his eyes open, unaware that he’d even closed them.

 

“Darren.  _Everything_ you do is okay.”

 

Darren smiles, wicked and beautiful, and his mouth is around the head of Chris’ cock, slow moving and careful.  Chris groans and feels the heavy pleasure of it deep in his belly, at the heat suffusing along his limbs, making him languid even while the tension rises.  His various fumblings during the past summers have been fine, momentarily fulfilling and forgotten.  But this, this is what his body has been aching for.  The heat of Darren’s mouth and the sinful movements of his tongue, the way his hands never leave Chris’ body, grounding him with touches against his soft inner thighs, the small of his back, the oddly sensitive curves of his hips.

 

Chris’ fingers find Darren’s face and his cock throbs in Darren’s mouth when he feels the tension in Darren’s jaw, how wide open he’s stretched to take Chris in. 

 

When Chris looks down again, Darren’s lashes are a dark smudge against his cheeks and Chris thinks he’ll remember this forever too.  Darren’s nose against his lower belly, his hands restless and stroking against Chris’ thighs, tongue so hot against his hypersensitive skin.  Heat pools in his belly and lower and his balls tighten.

 

“Darren,” Chris groans, a warning, and touches his fingers to Darren’s neck.

 

The noise Darren makes when he pulls off Chris’ cock is wet and obscene.  His lips are bruised, red and swollen, and Chris aches all over at the sight.

 

“Come here,” Darren nearly growls, sounding halfway to wrecked, and he tugs Chris forward.

 

The bed isn’t perfect, the mattress too firm and the comforter too cheap, but Darren’s body is a delicious weight on top of Chris as they settle near the pillows.  When Darren kisses him, Chris can taste the salt of himself, and it has him arching up against Darren, his cock sliding wetly in the groove of Darren’s hip. Chris doesn’t know how Darren managed to get his shorts off, but he’s glad he did.

 

“Oh, fuck, wait,” grumbles Darren.  “My bag.”

 

Darren rolls out of bed and stumbles naked across the small room, thick cock bouncing against his muscled thighs.  Chris stares unabashedly at the healthy curves of his ass and he strokes himself slowly, not that he needs the help staying hard. He’s already too close as is. Darren grabs his yellow pack off the floor where he’d dropped it and rummages through a pocket until he crows triumphantly.

 

Chris recognizes the little foil packets in one hand and the clear bottle in the other.  “You brought lube and condoms?”  He asks, equally surprised and relieved.

 

Darren’s grin is wicked as he crawls back into bed. “I was being _prepared_ , Mr. Colfer.  And optimistic.”  He puts the packets and the lube on the pillow next to Chris, who eyes them.

 

“Got yourself a whole handful here. You really are optimistic.”

 

Darren’s touch is eager as he manhandles Chris back where he wants him, pulling the comforter aside and getting it out of the way at the same time.  “I figured we had all night to try different things.  Me doing you, you doing me.  Back again.  Whatever you want. Literally up for anything right now.”  Darren bumps his hard cock against Chris’ thigh as he says it.

 

Chris rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling so widely it hurts his face.  “You’re an idiot.” He reaches up to grab Darren’s face and pull him down into a kiss.  The angle is off and their noses bump and he doesn’t care.  Darren’s body is hot against his, sweat gathering between them, and it’s a different kind of perfect.

 

Shifting, Chris gets his legs on either side of Darren’s narrow hips.  He knows he should maybe turn over, should maybe get on his hand and knees, but he craves the intimacy of Darren’s face, his eyes, his mouth.  Darren’s naked thighs are thickly muscled and hot against the back of his own as he shifts closer.  Between kisses, Darren’s panting breath sounds like the crashing waves.

 

Darren ruts up hard against him, sliding his cock against Chris’ and Chris can feel the shape of his smile as Chris thrusts back. Chris’ hand slides up Darren’s sweat-damp back to tangle his fingers tightly in Darren’s curls. He tugs, angling their mouths just that little bit better, making their kiss just a little bit deeper.

 

“Chris,” Darren pants into his mouth and it sounds like more than just a name.  He’s gorgeous like this, chest heaving with every breath, pupils blown so wide his eyes are nearly black in the dim motel room.  Chris shivers and his hips arch without thought, the muscles in his abdomen flexing as he seeks more friction.

 

“Yeah, come on.”

 

He hears the click of the bottle cap opening before he feels cool, wet fingers at his ass, gently seeking.  Chris tips his head back, takes a breath, and bears down.  The stretch has him groaning as Darren works one, then two long fingers into him.  His touch is confident and sure, and Chris feels like he’s falling apart in the most exquisite way possible.  Darren pushes in deeper with three, searching and finding.  He crooks his fingers forward and Chris arches up on a high gasp, back bowed tight, and voice straining on a moan.  He could come from this, Chris thinks, just from Darren’s fingers working him open and his hot tongue on his peaked nipples.

 

“Okay, okay. Come on.”  Chris pushes weakly at Darren’s wrist, impatient.

 

Darren gently eases his fingers out and Chris shivers at the loss, clenching uselessly.  But he catches Darren wiping his fingers on the bed sheets and for some reason it makes him laugh breathlessly.

 

“What?”  Darren rips open one of the condom packets.

 

“The sheets I’ve had to change,” he comments, thinking of the Inn.  But he stops thinking of anything else all together as he watches Darren carefully roll the condom on his flushed cock.

 

“Lucky for you someone else will have to take care of this bed when we’re done with it,” Darren says and then the head of his cock is right where Chris is aching the most.

 

Darren takes him slow, pushing in as gently as possible and Chris has to close his eyes against the flood of sensation as his body gives and opens.  Darren shifts and Chris gasps, tenses, and eases into it, finding the space in his body for Darren.  He feels it everywhere – heat in the back of his neck, his fingers flexing against Darren’s taut shoulder and hip, thighs straining to spread wider for Darren’s hips.

 

“You with me?” Darren asks and his voice is tight, strained.

 

“Yeah.”

 

The heavy weight of Darren inside him is shocking; the blunt stretch of his thick cock at once boldly real and impossible. Chris doesn’t want to lose himself to this – sweat and heat and the smear of precome across his belly as his cock throbs.  He wants to remember every moment, every slow thrust as Darren pushes deeper into him, every trembling kiss Darren gives as he struggles not to take Chris too hard or too fast this soon.  There will be time for that later, for wild and out of control, for shouting and rutting and destroying the sheets.  Right now this is what Chris wants.  The only thing that scares him now is the thought of a time when they aren’t doing this.

 

Darren’s skin slips and drags against his own as they fuck, bodies moving together finding a rhythm that has Chris moaning and digging his nails into Darren’s rocking flanks.  Chris tips his hips and the new angle lets Darren fuck in that bit deeper.

 

“Jesus _fuck_ , Chris,” Darren groans.  He bends his head to place sloppy kisses against Chris throat and his breath is like the sun against Chris’ needy skin.

 

Chris has never wanted anyone like this before – this endless aching kind of a need that he feels everywhere in his being. It’s in his fingertips and his bones and his hummingbird heart.  With every long thrust Chris feels it echoed in his cock; blood pumping hard and fast and heat gathering in his belly, waiting for the building tension to snap.

 

“Darren, fuck, I--” Chris reaches down to close his hand around his aching cock and is sure he can feel his own blood beneath his skin just as much as he hears it pounding in his ears.  He needs to come and he doesn’t want this to end, but his body is thrumming and his balls are tightening and he doesn’t think he could stop it if he tried.

 

“Do it,” Darren grunts, and he fucks in sharply, cock dragging against parts of Chris that have him shuddering and bearing down.

 

Want and need flares sharply in Chris’ belly, making his cock spill more sticky precome as his hips thrust and grind up on a stutter, working towards an inevitable end.  Above him, Darren groans and his whole body trembles with the effort.  Sweat drips from Darren’s skin onto Chris’ chest and that has him groaning too.

 

When he comes it’s a full-body release, back arching, toes clenching, breath stopping in his chest.  Thick come spills across his fingers and onto his stomach as his cock throbs heavily in his hand.  Ass clenches down around Darren, who fucks him through his orgasm, short graceless thrusts that send too bright sparks of pleasure across his sensitive skin.

 

Chris feels it when Darren comes, feels the heavy throb in his cock as he spills into the condom.  Darren groans and shudders, and when Chris wonders what it would feel like without the thin barrier between them, his ass tightens reflexively around Darren’s surely overly sensitive cock.

 

“Oh, fuck,” Darren moans weakly, halfway collapsing onto Chris’ chest.  “Don’t do that.”

 

“Can’t help it,” Chris says and Darren huffs a laugh. Chris can feel Darren everywhere, thighs and legs, chest and stomach, the softening weight of the cock still instead of him.  He wants to stay like this forever.

 

Chris wrinkles his nose when Darren carefully pulls out of him with a sticky wet sound and gets rid of the condom.   He knows they should clean up, but instead Chris wraps his arms around Darren’s shoulders and pulls him back down to the messy, damp sheets, tangling their limbs together.

 

Chris breathes and waits for his jackrabbit heart to slow.

 

“So.” Darren says, getting comfortable in Chris’ hold.

 

“Yeah.”  His ass aches and his muscles will remind him of what they just did tomorrow, but Chris feels perfect all the same.

 

“That was…”

 

“Yup.”  Chris buries his face in the side of Darren’s neck and inhales the heady scent of his skin and sweat and come.  “It was.”

 

Darren hands feel huge where they roam across Chris’ sweat damp and sticky body and Chris can still feel the heavy beating of Darren’s heart. “You’re doing me next,” he mumbles and Chris can hear the smile in his voice.

 

“Okay.”

 

Chris isn’t quite ready to sleep.  His body is relaxing and his mind is calming as his heart finally begins to slow, but he’s not yet willing to let the night take over.  Falling asleep meaning waking up one day closer to Darren’s inescapable return to New York. It doesn’t matter that it also means a day closer to Chris joining him; the weeks in between will stretch on forever.

 

“I will wait for you,” Darren says suddenly.

 

“What?”

 

“When I go home, and you’re still here. That’s not the end. You know it’s not the end.”

 

Chris swallows thickly.  “I know it’s not.”  He shifts until he can prop his chin on Darren’s chest and look up at him.

 

Darren’s eyes are closed, head tipped back against the pillow to expose the gleaming lines of his throat.  His cheeks are still flushed a lovely pink, his lips are so very red, and there’s a smudge on his neck that Chris doesn’t remember leaving.  He’s as close to perfect as Chris can imagine anyone being.

 

“I’m not worried,” Chris says and it’s the truth.

 

Darren’s lashes flutter.  In the low light from the lamp, his eyes are shades of dark.  “Me neither.”

 

Chris closes his eyes and takes a deep breath as Darren’s arms tighten around him.  His world is Darren’s warm body in these rumpled sheets in an old motel somewhere along the Pacific Coast Highway.  He will not worry about the coming weeks – the maybes and chances – not when his life has turned so sweet.  And if months, years down the line this stops working, he won’t regret that it happened.

 

***

 

The drive back to Santa Monica feels too fast, like they’re pushing 99 and the road has shrunk during the night.  Halfway there, Darren pulls the car over to the side of the road and points out a barely visible pathway down to an empty, maybe long forgotten stretch of beach.

 

Darren strips off his clothes and runs naked and shrieking into the surf while Chris watches and laughs and feels like his heart will never be the same again.  Chris piles his own clothes on top of Darren’s before joining him in the warm water and is immediately pulled under by grasping, playful hands. He laughs again and falls a little bit in love.  It’s fun, carefree and joyous, splashing in the surf, dunking each other under. Chris gets a mouthful of ocean water and spits it right back in Darren’s face.  He’s still laughing with Darren pulls him close and kisses him with a mouth full of salt.

 

They rut in the water, limbs twined and hips rocking while their hands try to find space between their bodies to stroke. Darren laughs when he comes, eyes squeezed shut, and Chris pants against his cheek and comes all over his stomach.  The ocean rinses them clean, but they have to stand naked in the sand while the sun dries them.

 

“Good old fashioned family fun at the beach, eh?” Darren leers, shaking his hips in Chris’ direction, and Chris just fondly rolls his eyes.

 

Just before they drive across the city limits of Santa Monica, Darren pulls off the highway and into a burger joint that has a jukebox in the corner and thick milkshakes on the menu.  They split an order of sweet potato fries and don’t say much, just sit together in the crowded restaurant while their feet bump underneath the table.

 

Chris knows that Darren is delaying their return to the city and he doesn’t question it.  He’s happy to spend every last sharply sweet moment with Darren until he goes. He doesn’t care where that is – a rundown motel, an empty beach, a kitschy restaurant.  It’s all the same to him as long as Darren is there.

 

Back in the car, Chris takes Darren’s hand, the one that had been resting on the gearshift, and doesn’t let go until they get home.

 

***

 

The morning Darren is set to check out of the Windward Inn, Chris wakes early, just as the sun is beginning to slip through the windows.  It’s quiet in the bedroom, the closed French doors shutting out the soft crashing of the waves and the early calls of the seagulls circling the sands.

 

Darren is still asleep, sprawled next to Chris in his bed, stretched out on his back like he hasn’t a care in the work. Chris gave up the pretense that they weren’t sleeping together the day after they came back from their drive. His mother had looked at him with the most knowing expression when they’d arrived back at the house, and through his blush he’d managed to smile at her.  She’d smiled at him.  He supposes that’s as much blessing as he needs; it’s certainly more than he’d hoped for.

 

They’d spent these last hot summer days spending as many hours together as they could, relaxing on the beach, strolling through town, hanging out with Chris’ friends one last time.  Rob had even hugged Darren at the end of their last dinner, which maybe meant more to Chris than his mother’s smile.

 

When Darren wakes up, he yawns loudly and rolls over into Chris, burrowing his face into Chris’ neck.

 

“Time is it?”  He mutters, smacking his lips and rubbing his leg against Chris’.

 

“Early,” Chris responds and he reaches a hand down between their bodies.

 

They fuck slowly, savoring it, committing it to memory for the coming weeks before Chris arrives in New York.

 

When the sweat is cooling, Chris tucks himself against Darren’s side, resting his cheek on his chest to hear his heart beating. He knows that soon they’ll have to get out of bed so Darren can get on the road, but he’s going to take up every last minute before that moment.

 

“It’s too early to ask you to move in with me, isn’t it?” Darren asks as he languidly runs his hand up and down Chris’ back.

 

Chris shorts indelicately.  “Uh, yes, I’d say so.”  It’s doesn’t surprise him that the mere idea of living with Darren sounds wonderful, even if it’s clearly too soon.

 

Darren hums softly.  “Plus, you know, I’ve got a roommate.  That’d be pretty shitty of me to do that to him. To just show up after six weeks and tell him he’s gotta go.”

 

“Yes, it would.”

 

“And we should definitely date at least six months before talking about moving in together.”

 

Chris shrugs as best he can lying down. “Well, six still seems fast, but let’s set that as the first benchmark.”

 

“But I’m still thinking about it.”  Darren says after a breath’s pause. He says it like it’s a confession.

 

Chris swallows.  “Me too.”

 

“Just as long as we’re on the same page about that.”

 

“We are.”

 

Chris closes his eyes when he feels Darren kiss the top of his head.  He will not say ‘ _I love you_ ’ as the creeping sun warms his bedroom; he won’t say it when Darren is about to drive away, but that doesn’t mean it’s not sitting there in his throat, waiting for another sunrise.

 

***

 

Chris tries not to mope as Darren finishes packing what little he brought with him.  A couple of suitcases don’t seem like enough to hold the last six weeks. He helps Darren grab his toothbrush from the bathroom and takes a t-shirt out of his hands before he has a chance to shove it into a bag.

 

“I’m keeping this one,” Chris states. It’s the green shirt that’s almost too small for Darren and certainly won’t fit Chris.

 

Darren grins.  “Fine, what do I get?”

 

“Me.”

 

Darren leans over the bed, cups Chris’ face in his hands, and kisses him hard.  “That works.”

 

Mr. and Mrs. Colfer meet them in the kitchen to say their own goodbyes while Cooper dances restlessly around their legs.

 

Chris’ dad gives Darren a brown paper lunch bag full of sandwiches.  “For the drive back,” he says.  “And the flight.”

 

“You didn’t have to do that.”

 

“It’s been a real treat having you here, Darren. A few sandwiches is nothing.”

 

Darren hugs him tightly, throwing his arms around Mr. Colfer’s big shoulders.  “Thank you,” he murmurs, and Chris can see how touched he really is.

 

“You’re welcome here anytime,” Mrs. Colfer adds.

 

“Thank you, ma’am.”

 

Mrs. Colfer waves her hand.  “Oh none of that.  I’m guessing this isn’t the last time we’ll see you, is it?”

 

Darren has the good decency to blush. “Yeah, I hope so.” He glances at Chris from under his eyelashes; a look Chris’ mother surely catches.  “I uh, I don’t have a ton of space in my apartment, but you guys are always welcome to come visit.  I can kick my roommate out for a few days and you can take his room.”

 

“We have been wanting to go back to New York,” Mrs. Colfer says, looking at her husband with a smile.  “And now with Chris moving there…”

 

“Plus his sister would love to meet you,” Chris’ dad chimes in.

 

“Then that’s settled.”

 

There’s a fragile moment when no one seems to know what to do, what else to say, until Darren breaks it by striding forward and hugging Mrs. Colfer tightly.

 

“Thanks for having me,” he says and Mrs. Colfer pats him on the back.

 

“See you soon.”

 

Darren pulls away only to bend down to wear Cooper is waiting for his own goodbye.  “I’ll miss you too, buddy,” he tells the dog.  Cooper’s tail thumps loudly against the kitchen floor as Darren scratches through his fur and rub his ears.

 

Chris watches them with a lump in his throat that won’t go away, and probably won’t for the next couple of weeks.

 

“Come on,” he says finally.  “I’ll walk you out.”

 

It’s easy enough to get Darren’s suitcases and bag into the car.  Much harder is it to see Darren standing at the driver’s side door with the keys between his fingers.

 

Chris shoves his hands in his pockets. “Well.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

The sunlight is in Darren’s hair and Chris is struck with the memory of the first time he saw the man, getting out of this same car. He had a clean-shaven face then, and neater hair, but he was just as beautiful as he is now. Standing this close, Chris can see all the freckles on Darren’s shoulders that he’s growing to adore.

 

“I’m going to call you all the time,” Darren states firmly.  “And text. And email.  And Skype.  I’m gonna send you so many pictures you have no idea.  You friended me on Facebook and Instagram; you can’t get rid of me now.”

 

Chris smiles even though his heart hurts. “Good thing I have every intention of keeping you.”

 

Darren groans softly and rubs his bearded jaw. “Fuck, Chris--”

 

“Don’t say it.” Chris shakes his head. He can’t hear _goodbye_.                   

 

“I’m not saying it.”

 

“Good.”

 

“If I don’t leave now I’ll never go.” Darren shrugs helplessly.

 

“Just kiss me hard before you do.”

 

Darren clasps Chris’ face in both hands and leans up on his toes to kiss him soundly.  Chris winds his arms around Darren’s shoulders and holds him close. The keys in Darren’s hand dig into Chris’ ear but he doesn’t care.  He tastes like the sun and summer, and underneath the coming fall.

 

“See you soon,” Darren murmurs against his lips.

 

“See you.”

 

Chris steps back just enough for Darren to duck into the driver’s seat and close the door. The rumble of the engine startles Chris and he folds his arms across his chest.

 

Darren sits in the car for several long breaths before shifting into gear and inching forward.  Chris watches the dusty blue BMW pull out of the driveway and out onto the road until he can’t see it anymore.  It feels like some vital piece of him is in the car, being carried away across the country.

 

Chris stands there a moment longer, aware that the taste of Darren on his lips will fade and the pressure of his hands on his skin will only linger so long.  But he cannot stay in the driveway forever.  The business of the Inn will carry on a little longer before they close up for the season.  He has laundry to do and chores to keep him busy until he too packs up and heads for New York. He’ll be fine. He will.

 

He turns and steps back inside.


	7. Epilogue

When it comes, the move to New York goes as smoothly as Chris could hope for.  He and his parents fly into the city in the morning, and by the evening he’s mostly unpacked his giant suitcases in his modest bedroom.  It helps that the guy who moved out of the room left behind the bed and most of the furniture.  It’s not the best quality, but Chris only had to pay $300 for everything and didn’t have to move a damn thing.  He mailed himself a couple of boxes of non-essentials, and anything else he left behind his parents can send over as he needs.

 

Chris and his parents spend the next days visiting the NYU campus, picking up toothpaste, shampoo, and soap, and cramming in what few touristy things they can in the scant hours they have.

 

“We’ll have to come back and visit when there’s more time,” Chris’ mother muses.

 

“And bring your sister,” Mr. Colfer adds.

 

Chris nods thoughtfully.  His sister isn’t returning from her semester abroad until the next week.  They’ll catch up; they always do.

 

In no time at all, the sheets are on his bed, his clothes are in his closet, and the personal knick-knacks he’d carefully packed are on the shelves.  The walls are still bare, but Chris knows he’ll have time to collect new things to hang up – new photos and new artwork to mark his new life.

 

And every moment of each day Chris thinks about Darren.

 

Chris spends the couple of days with his parents feeling like he’s about to burst out of his skin.  He aches to be this close to Darren and unable to see him, but he knows that the moment he’s back in Darren’s arms he won’t be able to leave for days.  And he doesn’t need his family around for that, even if they do approve of Darren.

 

Calls, texts, Skype, and everything in between helped to shorten the weeks since Darren drove away from the Inn, but nothing can shorten these days, when Darren is so near and still so untouchable.

 

On the morning his parents leave to head back to California, Chris walks them down to the curb outside his new apartment building. It doesn’t feel real yet; it doesn’t feel like he’s now living across the country from his parents for the first time, that he’s about to start college 3,000 miles away from everything that’s familiar.  He supposes it will hit him in the coming days, when the haze of moving and shine of something new has worn off and he realizes he can no longer walk down the hall to have dinner with his folks.

 

“You’re going to be amazing,” his mother says as she hugs him for what feels like the hundredth time in three days.

 

Mr. Colfer hugs him too, hand clapping him firmly in the middle of his back. “Knock ‘em dead, kid.”

 

“I love you guys,” Chris says, and he hopes they understand how much.

 

He hails them a cab and waves goodbye, watching until the car becomes just another indistinguishable yellow speck on the long, grey road.

 

He doesn’t feel bad at how quickly he pulls out his phone to text Darren.

 

 _They’re off to the airport_ , he sends and his fingers tremble with excitement.

 

**Come over.**

 

Chris smiles.  He knows every possible route to get from his apartment to Darren’s and his wallet is already in his pocket.

 

***

 

Darren’s building is nice, nestled on a surprisingly quiet side street with trees that are still green and planters of flowers that haven’t quite died.  It feels like a different kind of New York from where Chris is, even though it took less than 20 minutes to get there.  The doorman asks for his name, but he directs Chris to the elevator with a knowing smile when Chris tells him.  Chris blushes when he realizes he’ll likely be seeing a lot of this guy.

 

The elevator is interminably slow, or maybe Chris is just that anxious.  His skin feels tight and his palms are sweating and he wants to bounce his leg restlessly, but he can’t because he’s standing.  Chris catches his reflection in the smooth paneling of the elevator and frowns. He hadn’t even thought to change his clothes or do something with his hair, and suddenly he’s more self-conscious than he’s ever felt.  What if time has given Darren a new perspective?  What if he’s no longer interested the way he was in Santa Monica? What if Chris is no longer as appealing to him?  As desirable.

 

It’s ridiculous, Chris knows.  They haven’t gone more than a day since Darren left without talking in some way, sometimes for just a minute to say good morning, but often for hours.  Chris is not worried.  He hasn’t worried. And yet, suddenly, the improbable fear is right there, seeping into his gut and slowing his steps down the hallway to Darren’s apartment.

 

His hand trembles as he knocks on the door.

 

Darren is barefoot and beautiful.  His mouth opens in delight as he stares as Chris, his eyes roving all over Chris’ face, drinking him in the way Chris is savoring every piece of Darren in return.

 

“Hello again,” Darren says, and Chris revels in the sound of it, undistorted by phone or computer.

 

“Hi.” Chris feels like he’s vibrating. He wants to run into Darren’s arms, wild and carefree.  He wants to kiss him bold under the sun and never look back again.

 

“You’re here,” Darren breathes out. His pupils are blown as wide as his smile and the fear in Chris dissipates in an instant.

 

“I’m here.”

 

Darren smiles, clear eyes and open heart, and reaches out for Chris.  With one hand on Chris’ waist and the other cupping his face, Darren tugs him close, pulls him into a messy, off-center, ridiculous kiss.  Chris takes it in like air.  Like breath.  And no amount of phone calls or texts could rival this; closeness, touch, heat. A body under his hands, a heartbeat against his own.

 

Chris breaks away and presses wet kisses to Darren’s cheeks, his jaw, before burying his face in the crook of Darren’s neck. He no longer smells of salt and sand and sunscreen, but the unmistakable warmth of his skin is just the same.

 

“I missed you,” he confesses, as though it weren’t obvious, as though he hadn’t said it a hundred times before during the long weeks apart.

 

“I thought I was going to have to come steal you away from your parents,” Darren responds.

 

“I couldn’t just ditch them.”

 

“I know, but I still wanted you to.” Darren’s arms are so secure around Chris, his heart beating so steady.

 

“I can’t believe I’m finally here.” It’s felt like months instead of weeks, but the distance melts away into memory.

 

“I wanted to meet you downstairs,” Darren says. “But I didn’t want to cause a scene.”

 

Chris grins into Darren’s skin.  “I think your doorman knows what’s up.”

 

“Probably,” Darren snorts.  He pulls back.  His eyes are shades of green and the tan he got in Santa Monica still sets his skin a burnished gold.  Chris loves him.

 

“Come on.”  Darren takes his hand and tugs him into the apartment. Another time Chris will look around, to take in where and how Darren lives, but in that moment his attention is focused elsewhere.  “My roommate is out until tonight.  Stay.”

 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Chris tells him, and it’s the truth.

 

“Until you have to go back to your apartment.”

  
Chris pauses, considers.  “For now.”

 

Darren goes still, his eyes narrowing ever so, but there is curiosity in them, hope.  “You said six months before we talk about that.”

 

Chris shrugs.  “I said a _minimum_ of six months, but I never said we couldn’t negotiate.”

 

Darren pulls him into another kiss and it tastes of tomorrow, the next week, the next year.  It should be overwhelming, what Chris is suggesting, but it’s not. Not in a way that scares him. It’s open doors and bright rooms and the sun glinting on ocean waves.  It’s everything he wants for himself.

 

He’s not ready to say it yet, but Chris knows he won’t regret the words when it’s time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to all for reading.


End file.
